
St. Vitus Cathedral
Gothic cathedral of soaring spires holding a cursed crown behind a door with seven locks.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague sits with a local legend: a crown belonging only to Saint Wenceslas, kept behind a door with seven locks, said to kill within a year any pretender who wears it. It follows Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi official ruling occupied Prague in 1942, and the rumor that spread through the city after his death, that he had once slipped into this cathedral and set the crown on his own head. Along the way it traces the six centuries of construction behind the building that guards this story, from 1344 to 1929.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Bazilika sv. Ludmily
Neo-Gothic brick basilica with twin towers, honoring a murdered ninth-century Bohemian duchess turned saint.
Saints Peter & Paul Basilica
Neo-Gothic basilica with twin fifty-eight-meter spires and a devil's-bet legend behind it.
Church of Our Lady before Týn
Twin-spired Gothic church whose golden Madonna halo was forged from a melted-down Hussite chalice.
Prague Castle
Vast hilltop fortress complex with a Gothic cathedral, royal palace, and presidential seat.
Basilica of St. James the Greater
Baroque basilica famed for a centuries-old mummified arm hanging by the entrance, warning off would-be thieves.
Emmaus Monastery
Gothic monastery of Slavonic-rite monks, rebuilt after wartime bombing with twin modern white spires over its medieval cloister.