St. Francis Church

Mozart and Dvořák played here — organ and classical concerts by Charles Bridge in the baroque Church of St. Francis of Assisi.

The church of St. Francis of Assisi stands on Křižovnické náměstí square at the Old Town end of Charles Bridge. It was built in Baroque style between 1679 and 1685 by the architects Gaudenzio Casanova and Domenico Canevalle, according to plans by the French architect Jean Baptiste Mathey, replacing the original church of St. Francis from 1270 — three round openings in the floor still reveal the remains of its predecessor. The church was blessed in 1687 and consecrated in 1688 by the Prague archbishop Jan Bedřich of Wallenstein.

The Interior

The interior is lined with Slivenec marble and holds a tin baptistery from 1483. The dome, rising almost 41 metres, is decorated with the Last Judgment fresco by V. V. Reiner (1722–23), and the main altar bears the Stigmatization of St. Francis by J. K. Liška, considered his most valuable work. A hidden curiosity: extensive underground corridors run beneath the church.

Prague's Second Oldest Organ

The organ was built in 1701–02 in the workshop of Abraham Starck and is the second oldest in Prague. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonín Dvořák and other famous musicians have played it, and after a careful restoration it has regained its full baroque sound — one of the reasons organ concerts have been held in the church for decades.

The Knights of the Cross

The church serves as the order church of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, founded in 1231 by St. Agnes of Bohemia — the only religious order of Czech origin and the only male order ever founded by a woman.