St. Vitus Cathedral

Despite the high density of attractions in the castle complex, you won’t find it difficult to discern the undisputed highlight of all. This is of course St. Vitus Cathedral. This magnificent, enormous specimen of Gothic architecture dominates with its 96 m & 82 m high towers the city’s skyline.

Established in the year 1344 at the site of an older Romanesque rotunda of 930, the great cathedral took almost 600 years to be completed at last in 1929, almost 1000 years after the first church was established on the same spot. Numerous architects and mason workers took on, successively the larger-than-life task of completion, the most iconic symbol of the Czech capital. Countless Bohemian kings were crowned, married, and buried under its dome.

Its most notable features, if one can distinguish just a few, is of course the amazingly decorated St. Wenceslas Chapel, where the relics of the patron saint of the city along with the Bohemian crown jewels, are kept, the silver sculptured mausoleum of John of Nepomuk (a Bohemian Saint who was drowned in the Vltava River in 1393), as well as the truly astounding stained glass windows including one designed by Czech painter Alphonse Maria Mucha (pre-eminent exponent of French Art Nouveau). More