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Chapel Na Zderaze, former monastery and Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel

The area of the former monastery of the Knights of the Cross - the guardians of the Holy Sepulchre at Zderaz belongs to the oldest and most historically interesting sites in Nové Město. Its historical memory includes its humble medieval beginnings as well as its boom in the 13th century and during the foundation of the New Town by Karel IV. Then, there was the dramatic fate of the monastery during the Hussite wars and its resurrection in the Baroque era, when the outstanding Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel was the architect of the church. The fate of the church at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when most of the old buildings disappeared, only to be replaced by the present-day FEE CTU building, is no less dramatic. The main guardian of the memory of the place is still the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, which is an authentic reminder of the original monastery and its brilliant Baroque creator.

Place called "Na Zderaze"

The name of the place "Na Zderaze" recalls its earliest history. Its name is derived from Zderad - a member of King Vratislav’s retinue, who had his fortress here and who founded the first church of St. Peter and Paul after 1090. The strategic location of the site, situated on an elevated terrace above the river on the important road to Vyšehrad, led to the founding of the monastery of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre at the end of the 12th century. The reasons for founding the monastery on this site may have been similar to those that led to the founding the community of Knights Hospitaller in the Lesser Town or the Knights of the Red Cross monastery at Charles Bridge - i.e. the protection of Prague's suburbs, which were not yet protected by walls. The Order of the Knights of the Red Cross was founded in the early 12th century in Jerusalem to protect the Holy Sepulchre. The Zderaz Monastery was the only canonry of this order in Bohemia, and despite various historical obstacles it remained there until secularization in 1784.

Illustration: The church in the context of development before the foundation of the New Town (map by Vilém Lorenc) – according to Vilém Lorenc, New Town of Prague, Prague 1973, p. 31

Gothic monastery

In the 13th century, the old church of St. Peter and Paul was replaced by a new, larger Gothic church, the hypothetical form of which is depicted in the Baroque depiction in Schaller's description of Prague. In the 14th century, a new convent was built next to it.  Thanks to the foundation of the New Town, it was located in the middle of a dense urban development, in close proximity to the largest, and then symbolically most important, square in Prague. During the Hussite storms, the monastery was significantly damaged, which is reflected in the present name of the street "Na Zbořenci". The destruction of the monastery also led to the departure of the local monastic community, which partially returned after 1440, but the monastery continued to be rather poor. Its land was gradually sold off for the construction of townhouses, which incidentally led to the fact that the only surviving remains of the Gothic monastery can be found today in the neighbouring house no. 275-II.

Baroque restoration of the monastery

The peak period of the monastery of the Knights of the Cross was brought by its Baroque transformation. The community was fully restored only after the Thirty Years' War. Thanks to the new situation, by the end of the 17th century, the monastery managed to stabilize economically and raise funds for new construction, which was entrusted to Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel. According to the original ideas from 1712, the monastery was to be conceived as a monumental complex, including not only the convent with the prelature, but also symbolic pilgrimage sites, called Holy Rome (the new church), Holy Land (the calvary) and Holy Bohemia (Loreto). Plans recently discovered in Rome show us the Baroque-Gothic form of the church, which follows Santini's buildings in Sedlec or Kladruby. In the end, only a modest version was realised with the church, built in 1715-21, and the adjacent Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, built around 1720. The complex was subsequently supplemented by the rectory building, built after 1750, which has survived to this day and is thus, along with the chapel, the only witness to the monastery's vanished Baroque appearance. 

Architect J. B. Santini-Aichel

The architect of the church, Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel (1677-1723), was one of the most talented artists of his time. He was born and raised in Prague. Its impressive Gothic buildings were subsequently reflected in his own experimental work. He was fundamentally influenced both by the environment of his father's stone workshop and especially by his supposed apprenticeship with the Prague architect Jean-Baptiste Mathey, who put the young Santini in touch with contemporary European architecture. Santini's work is remarkable and, despite his short career, extremely extensive. He worked both for monasteries, where he often used an original creative combination of Baroque and Gothic, in reference to their antiquity, and for noble builders, whom he accommodated with modern palaces and castles. Among his most important buildings are the Chapel of St. Anne in Panenské Břežany, the monastery churches in Sedlec or Kladruby, the extensive grounds of the monastery in Plasy or the monastery with the pilgrimage church of St. John of Nepomuk in Žďár nad Sázavou. Among his Prague buildings, we can mention the Thun and Morzin Palace in Nerudova Street, the completion of the Church of St. Kajetan, or the pilgrimage site at Bílá Hora.

Church of St. Peter and Paul

The appearance of the Baroque monastery church is known from historical views as well as from photographs and plans taken just before the building was demolished in 1905. In the vignettes, the church is depicted as a tall building whose picturesque silhouette dominates the surrounding area. It is clear from the photographs and the plan that Santini did not choose Gothic forms for the church, but a purely Baroque composition based on the principle of a central space with a semicircular end and a dynamic cornice opposite. An important part of the church was also its altar decoration, probably also designed by Santini and complemented by the outstanding works of the sculptor Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff and the painter Petr Brandl, which are now in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Dublovice, Central Bohemia. The architectural design of the church anticipated Santini's masterpieces such as the monastery church in Rajhrad or the pilgrimage church in Křtiny. That is why we may consider its demolition in 1905 as one of the greatest cultural losses in Prague at that time.

Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre

The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre is a reminder of the place in Jerusalem where, according to tradition, Jesus Christ was laid after his crucifixion. The first temple was built over the Holy Sepulchre by Emperor Constantine in 326-335. Even then, the Holy Sepulchre itself was composed as a separate building in the middle of the temple. In the middle of the 16th century, the originally circular chapel acquired its characteristic appearance as a rectangular sanctuary with a horseshoe-shaped end, where the tomb of Christ was located. It was this form that was also subsequently disseminated as a model for chapels in Central Europe. The surviving chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at Zderaz is described as a traditional copy of the Jerusalem building, although Santini's distinctive style was also applied to it, as shown by the unusual curved wall of the chapel and its typically Santinian morphology. The contemporary significance of the phenomenon of the chapels of the Holy Sepulchre is best illustrated by the fact that a similar chapel was located at the nearby Church of St. Wenceslas at the Augustinian Canons' Monastery. This chapel, which was founded in 1643 thanks to a gift from Christopher Vladislav of Mitrovice, was unfortunately demolished at the beginning of the 19th century.

Demolition of the church and new school building

The Monastery of the Guardians of the Holy Sepulchre, along with many other convents, was dissolved by Joseph II in 1784. The buildings of the former monastery were acquired by a religious fund, which leased them to the military for barracks. At the end of the 19th century, the area at Zderaz became a place of radical building transformations. As in many other places in the New and Old Town, under the pressure of the modernisation of the city, historic buildings and grounds were seen as mere plots for new tenement houses and public buildings. In the spirit of this strategy, in 1898 the former monastery was offered to the Czech Technical University to expand its campus at Charles Square. The monastery and the church were demolished in 1904-1905, despite protests from the preservationists. In its place, a monumental historicist new building of the present Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University was erected in 1905-06. It is clear from the floor plan that the original ideas were even more generous, as the new building was to be given way by the historic house No. 275-II, which incidentally contains the remains of a medieval monastery. Fortunately, the house was not demolished and the school could not be built in its intended symmetrical form with two enclosed courtyards. Thanks to this, traces of the remarkable medieval and baroque memory of this unique place have been preserved. 

Digital version of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre

The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre was photographed in spring 2024 in cooperation with AgentFly in preparation for the OpenHouse event. In total, more than 900 photographs were taken from the ground and from the air, supplemented by 360° laser scanning. The resulting 3D model has more than 230 million points. However, for the preview on this website we use a model with about 240,000 triangles. You can touch and see the printed model at the OpenHouse event (18 May 2024), as well as view it in a web browser and with VR glasses. Last but not least, we have prepared an AR application that will display the model at the Na Zderaze site even if the gate is closed.

The 3D model and its variants were created by David Sedláček, head of the VR-laboratory of the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction at CTU FEL.

Other variants of the chapel model

AR Android app (Google Play)

AR iPhone app (App Store)

point cloud

model for 3D print

The author of the text is doc. Richard Biegel from the Institute of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University.

Responsible person Ing. Mgr. Radovan Suk