Church of Our Lady before Týn

The two dark spires of the Týn Church, each bristling with smaller turrets, form the backdrop of Prague's Old Town Square. They are the image most people carry home from the city. The church itself stands a step back from the square, hidden behind a row of houses, and it is reached through a narrow passage between them. This is the main parish church of the Old Town and has been since the 14th century. A Romanesque church for foreign merchants at the nearby Týn courtyard stood on the site earlier, followed by an early Gothic church in the 13th century.

The present three-aisled Gothic basilica was begun in the mid-14th century, funded by some of the wealthiest burgher families in the city. Its design shows the influence of the two great cathedral workshops of Prague, first that of Matthias of Arras and then that of Peter Parler. Parler's hand is seen above all in the window tracery and the sculpture of the north portal, whose tympanum shows scenes from the Passion. For about two centuries the church belonged to the Hussites. The gable and north tower were finished under King George of Poděbrady in the 1460s, and his statue once stood there beneath a gilded chalice, the Hussite emblem. The south tower was completed only in 1511 under the master builder Matěj Rejsek. Both towers rise to about 80 metres. After the Catholic victory at White Mountain, the king's statue and chalice were taken down in 1626, and the gold was melted into a halo for a figure of the Virgin. A replica chalice returned to the gable in 2017 as a gesture of reconciliation.

Inside, a fire in 1679 cost the nave its Gothic vault, and it now has a lower Baroque one, while the aisles keep their original rib vaulting. The furnishings are mostly Baroque. They include the high altar of 1649 with Karel Škréta's Assumption and an organ built by Jan Mundt in 1670–73, one of the oldest in Prague. Earlier pieces survive too: a font of 1414, the oldest in Prague, a stone canopy of 1493 attributed to Rejsek's workshop, and a carved altar of about 1530. By the first pillar of the south aisle is the tombstone of the astronomer Tycho Brahe, dated 1601.

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.

Getting there

The church stands on the east side of Old Town Square in central Prague, with its entrance through the arcade of the houses in front. Václav Havel Airport Prague (PRG) is about 12 km away in a straight line. The square is in the pedestrianised historic centre.