Kostel Sv. Jakuba / Church of St. James - Žatec (North-West Bohemia) - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

Gothic church of Church of St. James (Kostel Sv. Jakuba) in Žatec, originally a parish Roman Catholic donated to the Orthodox Church after 1945, is firstly documented in 1359.

Church of St. James, firstly documented in 1359, was the center of the parish and in the 16th century even an independent Žatec St. Jacob's suburb, which had its own bailiff. After the Hussite wars, the cemetery around St. James became the city's main burial ground. The cemetery was completely insufficient after the middle of the 19th century, so the town council banned burials here and the main city cemetery became a new cemetery near the church of St. Antonthony in 1866. Unlike other Žatec suburban churches, St. James survived the Thirty Years' War. Church was equipped by new furniture and bells in the second half of the 17th century. A vestibule was added to the church in 1752 and it was reconstructed in 1829 and 1904. Due to the newly emerging large community of Volhynian Czechs in Žatec (returnees from Ukraine) after 1945, it was donated to the Orthodox Church. Orthodox parishres brought an iconostasis from Volhynia, which is located in the church. The church is the seat of the Orthodox Church community of Žatec.

Church of St. James is a single-nave building with a vestibule, a triangularly closed presbytery and sacristy adjacent to the north side. It is entered from the presbytery through a sloping pointed portal. The sacristy is vaulted with a barrel vault. The flat-ceilinged nave is illuminated on the south and north sides by two pointed windows. In its northern masonry there is a walled, profiled Gothic portal topped by a pointed arch. There are several Renaissance tombstones in the interior of the church. The building development of today's church appearance is not clear. Only the Baroque origin of the vestibule is indisputable. The masonry of the nave, presbytery and sacristy may date from the 14th century, but also from the Hussite period (the reconstruction poof the older Gothic structure in the second half of the 16th century is documented).

Source: excerpted and translated from Wikipedia and National Heritage Institute portal.