Prague

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St Vitus’s Cathedral

Prague Castle, third courtyard

Forming the centrepiece of Prague Castle, its oldest and most important site features looming towers, pinnacles and buttresses. Entry is free to the nave and chapels, but a ticket is required for the rest. The cathedral was only completed in 1929, exactly 1,000 years after the murdered St Wenceslas was laid to rest on the site. In pagan times Svatovít, the Slavic god of fertility, was worshipped here, a clue as to why the cathedral was dedicated to his near namesake St Vitus (svatý Vít in Czech). Charles IV, who won an archbishopric for Prague, hired Frenchman Matthew of Arras to build the Gothic wonder, but it was completed by Swabian Peter Parler, hence the Sondergotik or German late Gothic design. It was 19th-century nationalists who completed the work according to Parler’s original plans. Inside, the enormous nave is flooded with multicoloured light from the gallery of stained-glass windows created at the beginning of this century. All 21 of them were sponsored during a period of nationalist fervour by finance institutions, including (third on the right) an insurance company whose motto – ‘those who sow in sorrow shall reap in joy’ – is subtly incorporated into the biblical allegory. The most famous is the third window on the left, in the Archbishop’s Chapel, created by Alfons Mucha. It depicts the struggle of Christian Slavonic tribes; appropriately enough, the artwork was paid for by Banka Slavia.

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