Church of Our Lady before Týn, Prague

The most photographed church in the Czech Republic, and one of the least visited. Almost nobody works out how to get in, because the door is not on the square: a row of houses was built across the front of it in the fourteenth century and never taken down. Behind them is the church that was the cathedral of Hussite Bohemia for two hundred years, and the tomb of the astronomer who taught Kepler.

The church with no front door

Every photograph of Old Town Square has those two black towers in it. They rise about eighty metres, and each one carries eight small spires ranged around a large one, in two tiers of four, so that from the square the pair reads as a crown set down on the roofline. It is the most recognisable silhouette in the city after the castle.

Adam and Eve

The towers are not identical, and once you have been told you cannot unsee it: one is noticeably broader than the other. Prague has always called them Adam and Eve, and explained the difference as the masculine and feminine principles of the world. The likelier explanation is more prosaic: they were built a long way apart in time, by different men, to different ideas of what a tower should be.

A church behind a terrace of shops

What defeats visitors is the front. There is one — a fine one, with a gable between the towers — but a terrace of houses was run right across it in the fourteenth century, when the land in front of the church was too valuable to leave as a churchyard, and it has been there ever since. The church now stands behind a row of shops and cafes, and you reach it through a vaulted arcade passage at number 604. Most visitors photograph the towers, look for a door, fail, and go to the Astronomical Clock instead.

Two hundred years on the losing side

There was a church on this spot in the eleventh century, serving the merchants of the Týn — the walled customs court where foreign traders lodged and paid duty, which is where the name comes from. The present Gothic building was begun in the mid-fourteenth century, in the reign of Charles IV, and its north portal is associated with the Parler workshop, the operation then at work on St Vitus. The south tower was not finished until 1511, and it was completed by Matěj Rejsek — the mason who built the vault at Kutná Hora — which is a good part of why the pair look the way they do.

The Hussite cathedral

From the 1420s the church became the headquarters of the Utraquists, the moderate Hussites who demanded communion in both kinds for the laity, and for roughly two hundred years it was the most important Protestant pulpit in Bohemia. On the gable stood a statue of George of Poděbrady, the Hussite king, and above it a great golden chalice — the emblem of the movement, visible across the square.

The preachers, and the man who is still here

Two of the most consequential preachers in Czech history worked from this pulpit and were buried in this floor. Konrad Waldhauser, the Austrian Augustinian brought to Prague by Charles IV, preached here against clerical wealth in the 1360s and prepared the ground that Jan Hus later stood on; he died in 1369 and his tombstone is in the church. A century later Jan Rokycana, elected Utraquist archbishop of Prague by the Bohemian estates in 1435 but never confirmed by Rome, ran the Hussite church from here for more than thirty years and was buried in this church in 1471.

1626, and the chalice that became a halo

After the Protestant defeat at the White Mountain in 1620 the church was handed to the Catholics, and in 1626 the king and the chalice came down. What happened next is the Counter-Reformation compressed into a single object: the chalice was melted down and the metal used for the halo of the gilded Madonna that was put up in its place. She is still there. A new gilded chalice was made for the church in 2017, four hundred years late.

Fire, and a lower ceiling

In 1679 lightning struck and the fire destroyed the medieval vault of the nave. It was replaced with a lower Baroque vault, which is why the interior does not soar in the way the outside promises. Knowing that in advance turns a mild disappointment into an interesting one: you are standing in a fourteenth-century church wearing a seventeenth-century ceiling.

The visitor's cheat sheet

What to see, in the order you meet it

The north portal, on the way in

In the arcade, before you go through the door, look up. The tympanum over the north doorway carries a carved Passion scene of about 1390, from the Parler workshop, and it is one of the finest pieces of Bohemian Gothic sculpture there is. What is in place is a copy — the original is in the National Gallery — but it stands exactly where the medieval one stood, and almost everybody walks under it without looking.

The nave

Inside, the shape is Gothic and nearly everything hanging on it is Baroque: nineteen altars, gilded and dark, filling a fourteenth-century frame. Give your eyes a minute. It is genuinely dim in here, and the building rewards standing still more than walking about.

Tycho Brahe

Find the red marble slab against a pillar on the south side of the nave, near the high altar. The astronomer is carved on it in full armour, hand on sword. Tycho Brahe was imperial astronomer to Rudolf II, wore a metal prosthetic nose after losing part of his own in a duel — reportedly over a point of mathematics — kept a pet elk, and made the observations from which Johannes Kepler, his assistant, derived the laws of planetary motion. He died in Prague in 1601, eleven days after a banquet at which court etiquette is said to have prevented him from leaving the table.

The mercury-poisoning theory — that Brahe was murdered, possibly by Kepler — was tested when the body was exhumed in 2010, and the mercury found was not enough to have killed him. The unglamorous bladder explanation has held up.

The Gothic that survived the Baroque

Hunt for the older things, because they are scattered and unlabelled. There is a stone canopy of 1493 from the workshop of Matěj Rejsek — the mason who built the vault at Kutná Hora — over the tomb of the Utraquist bishop Augustin Luciano, and later painted. There is a carved Calvary and a Madonna attributed to the anonymous master named after this church. There is an altarpiece of about 1530 by the monogrammist Master IP, whose panels show how fast Dürer's prints had travelled into Bohemia. And there is a pewter font of 1414, the oldest and largest in Prague — older than the Hussite wars, and therefore older than everything the church is famous for.

The high altar

The high altar dates from 1649 and its paintings — an Assumption of the Virgin above, and a Trinity — are by Karel Škréta, the leading Bohemian painter of the century and the artist who defines the look of Catholic Prague after the Reformation. Standing under a Counter-Reformation altarpiece in the church that was the Hussite cathedral is the whole argument of Czech history in one sightline.

The organ

High on the west gallery, in a black and gold case, is the organ built by Hans Mundt in the early 1670s — among the oldest surviving instruments in Prague. It fell silent for decades and has been restored over many years; it is played at concerts and occasionally at Mass. If you walk in and hear it, cancel whatever was next.

The houses in front

Before you leave, look properly at the terrace that hides the church, because it is not a nuisance: it is part of the composition. The building immediately in front, with the pair of pointed Venetian-style gables, is the old Týn School, and the arcade you walked through runs underneath it. To its side is the house U Bílého jednorožce and the rest of a medieval street frontage that has been rebuilt, refaced and re-roofed for six hundred years. The towers rising directly out of a row of ordinary shopfronts is exactly why this view works, and why the church would look worse if the houses had ever come down.

The Ungelt, behind the church

Go out of the arcade, turn left and walk round to the east side, and you come to the Týn Court, better known as the Ungelt — the walled yard where foreign merchants lodged, stored goods and paid duty from the eleventh century onwards. It is the reason the church is called before Týn: it stood in front of the customs court. Today it is a quiet cobbled courtyard of restaurants and small shops, ringed by Renaissance houses, thirty seconds from the busiest square in central Europe and almost always calm. Most people who photograph the towers never go through the gate.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• Tycho Brahe's tomb Red marble, against a pillar on the south side of the nave near the high altar, the astronomer carved in full armour. Metal nose, pet elk, and the observations that gave Kepler his laws.
• The gable, and what used to be on it A gold Madonna stands where the Hussite chalice stood until 1626 — and the chalice was melted down to make her halo. The Counter-Reformation in one object.
• The north portal tympanum In the arcade on the way in: a Passion scene of about 1390 from the Parler workshop. The original is in the National Gallery; the copy stands where it stood.
• Rejsek's canopy of 1493 A stone baldachin from the workshop of the man who vaulted St Barbara's at Kutná Hora and finished this church's south tower.
• The 1414 font Pewter, the oldest and largest in Prague, and older than everything this church is known for.
• The Mundt organ 1670s, black and gold, on the west gallery, and among the oldest instruments in the city.
• The Baroque interior in a Gothic shell The bones are fourteenth century; the altars, the pulpit and the Škréta paintings are seventeenth. Once you notice the mismatch you cannot stop seeing it — and it is the history of Bohemia, not an accident of taste.

Insider tips

Concerts are held here most weeks and are the easiest way to see the interior lit and to hear the acoustic, which is dry and clear rather than boomy — and, since the church is otherwise only open for a few hours a day, sometimes the easiest way to get in at all.

The best exterior photograph is not taken from in front. Walk to the far side of the square, to the corner by the Kinský Palace, and shoot along the diagonal: you get both towers separated instead of overlapping into one dark mass.

At Christmas the market fills the square directly in front, which is either the best or the worst thing that could happen to your photograph, depending on what you came for.

Bring a fast lens or a steady hand. It is considerably darker inside than the photographs suggest, flash is not allowed, and photography carries a small extra charge.

Where to stay and eat nearby

Old Town is where most visitors stay and it is the noisiest part of the city at night. If you want the square on your doorstep, take a room facing an internal courtyard. Quieter and better value: Josefov, the old Jewish Quarter, five minutes north, or across the river in Malá Strana.

The restaurants ringing the square charge for the view. One street back — Týnská, Dlouhá, or the lanes towards the river — the same food costs half as much.

Nearby churches

• St Vitus Cathedral — across the river and up the hill, the national cathedral, and the Parler workshop's masterpiece
• St Nicholas, Malá Strana — twenty minutes over the Charles Bridge, and the Baroque answer to all of this
• St Barbara's, Kutná Hora — the same Parler workshop and the same Matěj Rejsek, an hour away by train

See all the churches worth visiting in Prague →