St. Barbara's Church, Kutná Hora
Chrám svaté Barbory
Interesting facts
- The church was paid for by Kutná Hora's own citizens and was meant to rival St Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
- It was built outside the town walls on land of the Prague cathedral chapter, beyond the control of the nearby Sedlec monastery.
- Its full dedication is to Corpus Christi and St Barbara, after the Corpus Christi brotherhood that started the project.
- Some sources say the nave was planned twice as long; when silver output fell, work stopped in 1558 and a temporary wall closed the west end.
- Until its main vault was finished in 1547, the half-built church stood open to the rain.
- Benedikt Ried set his galleries about 1.15 metres below the triforium and placed altars on the upper level, creating the effect of a church above a church.
- During the Catholic restoration of the 1620s the face of Jan Hus was scratched out of an altar painting in the Minters' Chapel, as a local chronicler recorded.
- Frescoes of 1485–1492 in the Smíšek Chapel show the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, the Justice of Trajan and the vision of the Tiburtine Sibyl.
- The 1884–1905 restoration lengthened the church by one vault bay to the west and gave it a new neo-Gothic façade.
- Stained glass by František Urban includes a scene of Emperor Franz Joseph I visiting the church, and the last clear window received a St Agnes design in 2014.
Why it is worth it
St. Barbara's Church in Kutná Hora is the cathedral of a town made rich by silver, and it was built to say so. Dedicated to the patron saint of miners, it was begun in 1388 by Johann Parler, son of the great Peter Parler of Prague, then stood unfinished for more than sixty years when the Hussite wars stopped work. Building resumed in 1481 under Matěj Rejsek and later Benedikt Ried, and the church was not fully completed until 1905, after a long neo-Gothic restoration. The result is one of the outstanding late Gothic churches of central Europe.
Seen from the valley, the silhouette is unmistakable: three tent-shaped roofs rising like a cluster of pavilions above a forest of pinnacles and double-arched flying buttresses that brace the choir with its ring of eight radial chapels. The roofs, designed by Ried, were finished by 1588. Inside, Ried's nave is the masterpiece. He raised the aisles to the full height of the central vessel and inserted galleries, creating a two-storeyed interior, and covered it with a tracery vault whose ribs curve and interlace across the ceiling like the branches of a canopy. Slender piers carry it all with remarkable lightness.
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.
Getting there
The church stands at the edge of the historic centre of Kutná Hora, about half a kilometre from the town centre, in Central Bohemia. The nearest airport is Pardubice (PED), about 35 km away; Prague's international airport is the usual gateway, and Kutná Hora is reached from Prague by train or bus.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Sedlec Ossuary 2.6 km · church
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Saint Barbara's Church is a Roman Catholic Church in Kutná Hora (Bohemia) in the style of a cathedral, and is sometimes referred to as the Cathedral of St Barbara. It is one of the most famous Gothic churches in central Europe and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. St Barbara is the patron saint of miners, which was highly appropriate for a town whose wealth was based entirely upon its silver mines.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
49.94493, 15.26363per Wikidata