The Most Beautiful Churches in the Czech Republic
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful churches in the Czech Republic are Church of Our Lady before Týn, St. Vitus Cathedral and St. Nicholas Church. The list covers 6 churches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Bohemia and Moravia sit at the crossroads of Central Europe, and their churches show it. Prague was a royal and imperial capital under Charles IV in the fourteenth century, when Gothic architecture reached a peak of ambition here, and after the Thirty Years' War the Counter-Reformation filled towns and countryside with Baroque churches of extraordinary energy. A third tradition, unique to Bohemia, blended the two: the Baroque Gothic of Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel.
St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle was begun in 1344 under Charles IV, with Peter Parler as its master builder, and finished only in 1929. Across the Vltava, the Church of Our Lady before Týn raises its twin Gothic spires above Old Town Square. St. Nicholas Church in Malá Strana is the work of the Dientzenhofer family, with a great green dome and a ceiling painting that dissolves the vault into sky.
In Kutná Hora, a town made rich by silver mining, St. Barbara's Church rises above the valley with three tent-shaped roofs and frescoes of miners and minters inside. Nearby, Sedlec Ossuary holds the bones of tens of thousands of people, arranged in the nineteenth century into garlands, a coat of arms and a chandelier. And at Zelená Hora near Žďár nad Sázavou, Santini designed the Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk on a five-pointed star plan, a geometry inspired by the five stars said to have appeared above the saint after his death.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Church of Our Lady before Týn | Church building | |
| 2 | St. Vitus Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 3 | St. Nicholas Church | Church building | |
| 4 | Sedlec Ossuary | Church building | |
| 5 | St. Barbara's Church, Kutná Hora | Church building | |
| 6 | Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at Zelená Hora | Church building | ✓ |
01 Church of Our Lady before Týn
Kostel Panny Marie před Týnem
Czech Republic · 0.1 km from Prague50.088° N 14.423° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay Prague's Old Town grew up as a merchants' town around this square, and the neighbouring Týn courtyard served the foreign merchants who came here to trade. The church's towers still dominate the Old Town skyline, and it is from the square that most people first see them.
Did you know? Tycho Brahe's remains were exhumed in 2010; analysis showed he did not die of mercury poisoning, a theory dating from an earlier opening in 1901.
02 St. Vitus Cathedral
Katedrála svatého Víta v Praze
Czech Republic · 1.7 km from Prague50.091° N 14.401° E
Image by Duernsteiner from Pixabay Three places deserve time. The Chapel of St Wenceslaus, built by Parler in 1356–64, has walls set with more than 1,300 semi-precious stones and 14th-century paintings of the Passion; it can be seen from the doorways, and a small door with seven locks leads from it to the chamber where the Bohemian crown jewels are kept. In the south ambulatory is the monumental silver tomb of St John of Nepomuk from 1736, designed by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach. And in the north side of the nave is a stained-glass window designed by Alfons Mucha, a highlight of the 20th-century glazing along with the rose window depicting the Creation, designed by František Kysela in 1925–27.
Did you know? The chamber of the Bohemian crown jewels is locked with seven keys, traditionally held by seven officials including the president and the archbishop.
03 St. Nicholas Church
Kostel svatého Mikuláše na Malé Straně
Czech Republic · 1.4 km from Prague50.088° N 14.404° E
VitVit · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Lesser Town (Malá Strana) itself is the old quarter on the left bank of the Vltava below Prague Castle, a district of palaces, gardens and steep lanes.
Did you know? Until 1891 watchmen paid by the town lived in the tower and kept lookout for fires and approaching enemies.
04 Sedlec Ossuary
Kostel Všech svatých
Czech Republic · 34.9 km from Pardubice49.962° N 15.288° E
H2k4 · CC BY-SA 3.0 The present arrangement is the work of František Rint, a woodcarver hired by the Schwarzenbergs in 1870 to put the heaps of bones in order, and he signed his work in bone on the wall by the entrance. The upper church was remodelled between 1703 and 1710 to designs by Jan Santini Aichel. The effect is macabre but carefully composed, and the ossuary draws more than 200,000 visitors a year. It belongs to the Kutná Hora World Heritage Site, together with the town's historic centre and the Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec.
Did you know? In April 1421 Hussite forces under Jan Žižka burned the abbey and killed many of its monks.
05 St. Barbara's Church, Kutná Hora
Chrám svaté Barbory
Czech Republic · 37.1 km from Pardubice49.945° N 15.264° E
Thomas Ledl · CC BY-SA 4.0 The church also tells the story of the town that paid for it. Medieval frescoes in the chapels show not only saints but the secular world of Kutná Hora, with miners and coin-minters at work, for this was where much of the kingdom's silver was dug and struck into coins. The approach is part of the pleasure: Barborská street runs along the edge of the old town past a balustrade lined with statues, with the long front of the former Jesuit college on one side and the church slowly revealing itself ahead. Since 1995 St. Barbara's has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Kutná Hora's historic centre, together with the cathedral at Sedlec.
Did you know? Its full dedication is to Corpus Christi and St Barbara, after the Corpus Christi brotherhood that started the project.
06 Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at Zelená Hora
Kostel svatého Jana Nepomuckého
Czech Republic · 32.8 km from Jihlava49.580° N 15.942° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Aqalexor · CC BY-SA 4.0 The church was consecrated within a few years of the start of work, and building of the cloisters continued after it. In 1784 a fire damaged the roof; permission to restore the church came in 1792 on the condition that the town's cemetery be moved to the hill. The church was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994.
Did you know? Santini drew the whole design with a compass, building it from arcs of circles whose radii were multiples of a single basic module.
More about Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at Zelená Hora →
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful churches in the Czech Republic?
- On our list, Church of Our Lady before Týn ranks first, followed by St. Vitus Cathedral and St. Nicholas Church.
- Why is Sedlec Ossuary decorated with bones?
- The cemetery at Sedlec became so popular after the Black Death and the Hussite Wars that bones were stored in the chapel. In 1870 a woodcarver, František Rint, was hired to arrange them into the decorations seen today.
- How long did it take to build St. Vitus Cathedral?
- Construction began in 1344, but war and other interruptions left the cathedral unfinished for centuries. It was finally completed in 1929, nearly six hundred years later.
- Who designed the church at Zelená Hora?
- Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel, an architect known for blending Gothic and Baroque forms. The church, built in the 1720s, is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
- How many churches are on this list in the Czech Republic?
- The list covers 6 churches.