Built in 1316, St. Ann’s Church stands at the foot of the Charles Bridge in the Old Town of Prague. The church maintains most of its timber roofing, a unique example of an original Gothic truss system. Wall paintings from that period also, remarkably, remain. (...)
Built in 1316, St. Ann’s Church stands at the foot of the Charles Bridge in the Old Town of Prague. The church maintains most of its timber roofing, a unique example of an original Gothic truss system. Wall paintings from that period also, remarkably, remain. Emperor Charles IV commissioned the interior decoration and it was carried out by members of his imperial court workshops, thought to include the Master Theodoric. Subsequent painted additions by Renaissance and baroque artists created a series of frescoes that reflect the flow of Czech artistic styles.
In 1782, St. Ann’s Church became one of many Catholic structures converted to secular use by the Emperor Joseph II as part of his reformation program. Over the last 200 years it was used as an industrial building that housed printing machinery and then as a warehouse. Three floors were installed within to tailor the church to its new function, blocking the vault from view, damaging murals, and disrupting the timber configuration from the 1730s. An unsound arch collapsed in the early 1880s and no reconstruction was attempted until 1989, when insensitive renovations removed pieces of the original Gothic truss.
