Pilgrimage church of St. John Nepomuk / Poutní kostel sv. Jana Nepomuckého (Zelená Hora, Czech Republic)
N 49° 34.813 E 015° 56.520
33U E 568095 N 5492385
Pilgrimage church of St. John Nepomuk (Poutní kostel sv. Jana Nepomuckého) in Zelená Hora, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, is interesting not only from "ground view" but its unique symbolic star-design is best visible using aerial/space photography.
Waymark Code: WM7K5D
Location: Kraj Vysočina, Czechia
Date Posted: 11/03/2009
Views: 174
At the beginning of the 18th century an architectural style unparalleled in the rest of Europe developed in Bohemia. Known as Baroque Gothic because it involved the transposition of Gothic elements into Baroque form it was the style in which the Church of St. John of Nepomuk (In Czech: Poutní kostel sv. Jana Nepomuckého) on Zelená hora (Green Hill) was built in the years 1719-1722 in Zdár nad Sázavou.
The pilgrimage church at Zelená hora is a unique work of art and indisputably the most original and individual building designed by the brilliant Czech architect of Italian ancestry Jan Blažej Santini-Aichl in the Baroque-Gothic style. It is a building that escaped the conventional architectural rules and nostrums of the time, and it impresses even the modern eye as quite exceptional, with its complex interconnecting spatial forms, the dynamism of tis volumes, and the upward lift that defies the weight of the masonry.
The church is surrounded by cloisters in the pattern of a ten-pointed star, which provide shelter for the pilgrims from bad weather. The relationship between the ten-pointed star (refers to the ten-sided Marian well of the nearby monastery in Zdár) and the five-pointed star (symbol of the Virgin Mary) represents the Cistercian well in Zdar in the surface of which the Marian star is reflected through St. John of Nepomuk who revered the Virgin Mary in the same way as did the Abbot Vejmluva who had the church built.