St. Wenceslas Church in Zderaz

St. Wenceslas Church in Zderaz is a Gothic, single-nave church in Prague's New Town, standing at the corner of Resslova and Dittrichova streets — among the oldest parish sites in this part of the city, with roots reaching back well before Charles IV laid out the New Town itself.

Why is it called "at Zderaz"?

Zderaz was an independent settlement here long before New Town existed, and the first record of a church on this spot dates to 1115. Toward the end of the 12th century, local nobles donated their estate to found a monastery of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, established in 1190. Because the settlement's own parish church was lost in the process, the monks built a replacement Romanesque church dedicated to St. Wenceslas — first documented in 1180 — which took over parish duties for the area. In 1324 the order bought a neighboring house with baths and set up a hospital next to the monastery, later joined by a school and a cemetery.

How did the building change over the centuries?

When Charles IV founded Prague's New Town in 1348, St. Wenceslas became one of its parish churches. In the second half of the 14th century it was rebuilt in Gothic style as a single nave with a semicircular apse to the east and a square tower to the west — a layout confirmed by archaeological work carried out in 1927–1929. Renaissance and Baroque changes followed, and the interior received new vaulting in 1586–1587. Surviving decoration includes fragments of Gothic wall paintings from around 1400, eighteenth-century paintings by Josef Hager, and a 1637 pulpit carved by Jan Jiří Bendl.

What happened to the monastery, and why did the church close?

In 1785, under the Josephine dissolution of monasteries, both the church and its adjoining monastic buildings were shut down; the monastery was turned into a military storehouse, and from 1809 it housed a prison known as the Wenceslas Prison, closed in 1889 and later demolished. The church itself did not return to religious use until the twentieth century: a Gothic-revival restoration followed in 1909, and in 1926 the building passed to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, which reopened it for services on 29 September 1929 — the feast day of its patron saint. On 14 February 1945 the building was damaged during an Allied air raid on Prague.

What else is worth knowing nearby?

A few hundred meters further along the same Resslova street stands the Orthodox Cathedral of Ss Cyril and Methodius, whose crypt was the site, in June 1942, of the final stand of the Anthropoid paratroopers who had assassinated Reinhard Heydrich. The two churches belong to different denominations and have no institutional connection, but they sit on the same stretch of New Town near the Vltava embankment.

Frequently asked questions

Which denomination uses the church today? Since 1926 it has been administered by the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, which holds regular services there.

Is this really one of New Town's oldest churches? Yes — its documented history goes back to 1180, predating Charles IV's founding of the New Town in 1348, and it has survived Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque rebuilding on the same site.

Where exactly is the church located? At the corner of Resslova and Dittrichova streets in Prague's New Town, close to the Vltava riverbank.

Does the church have any connection to the Heydrich assassination? The church itself was not where the paratroopers hid — that happened in the crypt of the neighboring Cathedral of Ss Cyril and Methodius, on the same Resslova street.