Saturday, March 24, 2012

Abbey Church of Our Lady, Sedlec, Czech Republic

The one excursion we did from Prague took us to Kutna Hora, some 50-60 miles from the city.
The main line station for Kutna Hora is closer to the suburb of Sedlec than the city itself. To get to the city you have to take a peculiar little single carriage train. However this was quite handy as a visit to Sedlec formed part of the plans for the day. The abbey church was built in the C13 but destroyed during the hussite wars and restored in an odd stylised baroque gothic. Window tracery was removed and the vaults decorated with plaster ribbed patterns. A major restoration took place here in 2001. The crisp and cool lines of the interior show especially well in the view taken from the west triforium. I am sure the interior once held many more baroque fittings and there were more coloured frescoes than currently are preserved.  The east end has a large staircase on the north side which leads to the inside of the lean-to roofs above the aisle vaults and to the small gallery over the west end for a splendid view of the interior..

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