Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral

Stand on the pavement of Resslova Street for a moment. Traffic runs downhill towards the river, and trams rattle past at the corner. Now look at the low wall of the church, just above street level. There is a narrow window there, and the stone around it is pitted with small, rough craters. Those marks are bullet holes. They have been left on purpose, so that nobody walking past can forget what happened here.

From the outside, this building looks like many other Baroque churches in Prague. It has a pale facade, tall windows, and the calm, ordered lines of the eighteenth century. Baroque, for anyone unfamiliar with the term, is the theatrical European style of curves, light and drama that followed the Renaissance. Prague is full of it. That is part of what makes this church so easy to miss. Plenty of visitors walk past it on the way to the river without a second glance.

The church was built in the 1730s, and it was not originally Orthodox at all. It was a Catholic church dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo, an Italian reformer bishop. It belonged to a community that cared for elderly and retired priests. The design is linked to the Dientzenhofer circle, the family of builders who shaped much of Baroque Prague. Later in the eighteenth century, church reforms under Emperor Joseph the Second closed many religious houses, and this one lost its original purpose.

For more than a century afterwards, the building had a quiet and practical life. It was used for secular purposes, and its role as a place of worship faded. Then, in the 1930s, it gained a new identity. The church was handed to the Czech Orthodox community, and it was rededicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius. These two brothers were Byzantine missionaries of the ninth century. They brought Christianity and a written Slavic language to the region, so the dedication carries deep meaning for Czechs and Slovaks.

The key figure in that Orthodox revival was a bishop named Gorazd. He had once been a Catholic priest, and he became the leader of the small Orthodox church in the Czech lands. Remember his name. He becomes central to the story only a few years later, in the darkest chapter of this building's life.

In 1939, Nazi Germany occupied the Czech lands. Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most senior figures in the SS, was sent to rule over them. His rule was brutal, and people knew him as the Butcher of Prague. The Czechoslovak government in exile in London planned to strike back. Soldiers trained in Britain were dropped by parachute into the occupied country. Their mission had a code name — Operation Anthropoid.

On 27 May 1942, two of those soldiers, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, ambushed Heydrich's car at a bend in the road in northern Prague. The attack almost failed. Gabčík's gun jammed. But Kubiš threw a bomb, and Heydrich was badly wounded. He died about a week later. It was one of the very few successful assassinations of a top Nazi leader during the whole war.

The German response was savage. Thousands of people were arrested, and many were executed. The village of Lidice, west of Prague, was destroyed completely as a reprisal. Meanwhile, the parachutists needed somewhere to hide. With the help of the church community, seven of them were taken into the crypt beneath your feet. It was a cold stone space built for burials, not for living people.

They stayed hidden for several weeks. Then one member of the resistance network betrayed them to the Gestapo. Before dawn on 18 June 1942, hundreds of SS troops surrounded the church. Three of the men were in the choir loft above the nave, and they fought for hours before they died. The other four were down in the crypt. The narrow window you saw outside was their only opening to the street.

Here is a detail that many visitors miss. The Germans could not force their way into the crypt, so they brought in firefighters. They pumped water through that small window, trying to flood the men out. The soldiers inside pushed the hoses back and kept fighting. In the end, all four chose to take their own lives rather than be captured. Not one of the seven was taken alive.

The story did not end with them. Bishop Gorazd had not known about the hiding place in advance. Even so, he took responsibility to protect his community. He was arrested and executed, along with priests and lay members of the church. The Orthodox Church was banned in the Protectorate. Later, Gorazd was recognised as a saint by the Orthodox Church. His face and his name appear in the memorial today.

Today the crypt holds a national memorial to the heroes of the Heydrich terror. You can walk down into the same cramped space. The walls are rough, and the air is cool and still. Inside, from the crypt side, you can see the inner face of that famous window and the damage around it. There are busts of the parachutists, and displays explain the operation and its human cost. Upstairs, the church is still a working Orthodox cathedral, with icons, candles and services.

When you come back up onto Resslova Street, pause again beside the window. Notice how ordinary the corner is — the trams, the shops, the people hurrying past with phones in their hands. Look for the fresh flowers and ribbons that often rest beneath the plaque. Someone left them recently, perhaps this morning. More than eighty years later, people still stop here. And now, as you walk on towards the river, you will be one of them.