The (Other) St. Nicholas Church

It turns out that Prague has two churches dedicated to St. Nicholas. This the largest (as you can see) and the most significant historically. This church is at the foot of the hill where the Castle sits. It was built between 1704 and 1755 and is hailed as the greatest example of Prague Baroque.



Even with my habit of looking up for photos in such spaces, it is difficult to convey the scale of the size of the interior of this church. In the center of the crossing, directly under the dome of the church, it is 70 meters from floor to the ceiling. Standing under it and looking up, I found I became quite dizzy and overwhelmed. It is truly an immense space.

An interesting thing about all the walls and this pulpit you see below is that all this "marble" is fake. It is all painted. Even up close, I could not tell this. It is supremely well done.

Surrounding the dome are larger-than-life statues of four church fathers (none of which are Nicholas???). This is Cyril who, for some reason, has his staff on this poor fellows neck. No doubt, this is the way he settled religious differences.

But look up... OMG. This place is expansive.

The Baroque style of this place has filled it with excessive amount of gold and silver.

The dome and transept are filled with a vast amount of gold and painted decoration.

The nave is no small space either. The balcony at the rear holds a pipe organ with over 4000 pipes ranging up to 6 meters in length. This organ was played by Mozart in 1787 and his Mass in C was first performed here shortly after this visit.

At the back of the church, looking up at the underside of the organ balcony, we see large ceiling paintings that take advantage of the forced perspective of scale, distance and angle of view to tell stories on a grand scale. The white decorations on the tops of the organ pipes are also evident here.

Turning around, the view looking toward the altar we see a stunning array of gold and colorful statues and decorations.

A "small" chapel here is still a large place with a high painted ceiling and gold encrusted altar.

I've used up all the words I have to describe size and quality so I'll just point out that the image below is the ceiling above the nave.