CASTLE, Cathedral (Exterior)

The pride of Prague Castle, a symbol of the whole city and home to the Bohemian Crown Jewels, Saint Vitus Cathedral is a splendid example of fourteenth-century European Gothic architecture, which actually took 600 years to complete.

The Cathedral as it stands today was built on the orders of Charles IV to replace an older Romanesque basilica, the crypt of which was preserved as the tomb of the kings. The part at the back, with the choir and the apse, also dates to this period.

This is the most sacred area of the Cathedral, conceived as a marvelous triple-nave structure with radiating chapels from which airy flying buttresses rise up.

Construction was begun in 1344 by the Frenchman Mathieu d’Arras, and continued from 1353 onwards by the German architect Peter Parler, who designed the fabulous net vaults. After the deaths of both Charles IV and Parler, the construction work was slowed by the wars that raged through Bohemia during the 15th century. Work on the Cathedral then came to a halt for more than three centuries, leaving it halfway completed at the height of the transept, with a provisional wall resting against which was a huge organ, and did not begin again until the second half of the 19th century....