Cathedral of Ss. Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert
In the Czech Republic, the cathedral does not have many competitors from the artistic perspective. Its history is an abbreviation of the history of art in Bohemia from 10th to the 20th century, its material and space together with the whole artistic content create a multiform organism which gradually received marks of mature culture efforts of particular periods and which were piled up on the same place for thousand of years in vertical and horizontal levels. From the beginning until today, the cathedral has always been a dominant of the Prague Castle and of the city.
The oldest construction fragments are ruins of the St. Vitus' rotund founded by St. Wenceslaus and completed after his martyr's death. Its shape was based on the mature Carolingian central. Even the ulterior basilica, founded by the bohemian princes, Spytihněv II and Vratislaus II above the grave of St. Wenceslaus, has been preserved through some construction pieces in the basement of today's cathedral. It was a votive church dedicated mainly to the local saints, Ss. Wenceslaus, Adalbert and Ludmila; its architectonic form was more complex. A final form was given to the basilica after its reconstruction in the 12th century and by arcade of the middle body in the second half of the 13th century. The neighbouring canonry house, founded in the beginning of the 14th century already in a Gothic form, was not completed. Even though the basilica of St. Vitus was surrounded by stone buildings of the palace, St. George's church and a massive fortification, together with the towers of the St. George's it dominated and created a characteristic panorama of the Prague Castle.
Promotion of the Prague diocese to archdiocese caused a construction of a noble cathedral. In the same time, the king's residence was also expanded to a wide group of buildings and based on that, the narrow line of the castle promontory was amplified and raised by mounds. In this upper level a new church, promoted by Charles IV, was raised, a work of many important artists of the middle age. The construction was started by a French master Matthias of Arras in 1344 and after his death, Peter Parler from Schwäbisch Gmund continued in his work from 1353 to 1399. His successors, Parler's son John and masters Wenceslaus and Peter, continued in the construction of the cathedral until 1420, when the Hussite wars violently stopped the construction works.
A disastrous fire launched on 2nd June 1541 on the Prague's Lesser Town destroyed the royal castle and moved also to the cathedral's tower and roof; from here it broke inside and caused many destructions and damages. A restoration work took more than 20 years and was performed by court architects Boniface Wohlmut and Hanuš Tirol. These two constructed from 1556 to 1561 next to the temporary wall a renaissance gallery (Wohlmut's gallery). During this reconstruction the tower was also adjusted and its roof in the Renaissance style became and still is a characteristic sing of Prague.
It seemed that the metropolitan church would remain a construction torso but on the 1st October 1873 (at the 900th anniversary of the diocese), Cardinal Schwarzenberg put the headstone to complete the construction of the St. Vitus' cathedral. The first constructor became Josef Ondřej Kranner who utilized his experience from France, Germany and Italy not only to reconstruct the old part of the building but also to create his own proposal to complete the construction of the cathedral in a Roman-Gothic style. After him architect Josef Mocker continued the work; he represented a strict restoration purism and pseudo-gothic architecture. The last person who took part in the completion was Kamil Hilbert. He succeeded to complete the cathedral in the beginning of the St. Wenceslaus' Millennium. Nothing else was left but to consecrate the completed metropolitan sanctuary that many generations longed for. This consecration took place on Sunday, 12th May 1929 and the cathedral was officially opened to the public on the 28t September 1929. By this act hundreds of years of effort to finish a construction of a dignified cathedral in the Prague Castle were completed. During these celebrations nobody predicted that there would be many other problems that the cathedral would undertake mainly during the communist regime and in the aftermath.
