Pilgrimage Church of Saint John of Nepomuk

Listen to the gravel under your feet as you climb. The path rises gently through trees, and then the church appears at the top of the hill. It is white and pale, with sharp points and curving walls. It does not look like any church you have seen before. The shape seems to change as you walk around it, and that effect is deliberate.

You are standing on Zelená hora, which means Green Mountain, just outside the town of Žďár nad Sázavou in the Czech Highlands. This is the Pilgrimage Church of Saint John of Nepomuk. It was built in the early eighteenth century, and it was finished within only a few years. Since 1994 it has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list. That puts this small hill in the same company as the pyramids and the Great Wall.

First, the man the church honours. John of Nepomuk was a priest in fourteenth-century Prague. In 1393 he was thrown from the Charles Bridge into the Vltava River on the orders of King Wenceslas the Fourth. Popular tradition says he died because he refused to reveal what the queen had told him in confession. Historians see a more political dispute between king and archbishop. Either way, his cult grew for centuries. He became the patron of silence, of confession, and of bridges.

Now the legend that shaped this building. Locals and pilgrims tell how five stars appeared above the river where his body lay. That image of five stars became his symbol. You will see it on statues of him all across Central Europe. Here, the architect took the number five and built a whole church from it. The floor plan is a five-pointed star. Look for five entrances, five altars, and many other groups of five. The number repeats in almost every part of the design.

The architect was Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel. He was born in Prague to a family of Italian stonemasons. Records describe him as physically disabled, partly paralysed from a young age. He still became one of the most original builders of his time. His patron was the abbot of the nearby Cistercian monastery at Žďár. The abbot was a strong supporter of Nepomuk's cult, and he wanted a pilgrimage church worthy of it.

Here is the first surprise. When building began, John of Nepomuk was not yet a saint. He was beatified while the church was under construction, and he was canonised only in 1729. So the abbot and Santini were building a shrine to someone the Church had not officially made a saint. It was a bold act of faith, and also something of a wager on the future.

Think about the style for a moment. Santini worked in a manner people now call Baroque Gothic. Baroque is the theatrical, curving style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gothic is the older medieval style of pointed arches and ribbed vaults. Santini mixed the two. You can see Gothic pointed windows and ribs, but they sit inside the swelling, dramatic forms of the Baroque. For the Cistercians, the Gothic shapes were a way to point back to the medieval roots of their own order.

Walk slowly around the outside before you go in. The walls bend in and out. The star points push forward, and between them the surfaces pull back in curves. Light falls on the walls differently every few steps. In the morning one side glows and the other stays in cool shadow. As clouds pass, the whole building seems to shift. Santini designed it to be seen from all sides at once, almost like a sculpture.

Now look at the low wall that surrounds the church. This is the ambit, an enclosing cloister wall with covered walkways. Its outline is not round but has ten sides. Set into it are chapels and gates, again arranged in fives. The wall frames the church like a star inside a larger star. When you stand at one of the gates and look back, the church sits exactly in the centre of the frame.

The ambit has its own story. In the late eighteenth century, Emperor Joseph the Second closed many monasteries, and the monastery at Žďár was one of them. Around the same time, fire damaged parts of the complex. For a period the enclosure served as a cemetery, and old gravestones remain a quiet part of the place. Restoration work in later centuries brought the church back to the form you see today.

Step inside. The interior is bright and mostly white, with gold and colour in the details. Your eyes go upward, into the central dome. Look at the very top. You will see a red tongue surrounded by stars and light. This is the second surprise. The tongue is the most famous relic of Saint John. When his tomb in Prague was opened in the eighteenth century, people believed they had found his tongue preserved. It became the symbol of the secret he would not tell.

There is a quiet twist to that relic. Much later, in the twentieth century, scientists examined it. They concluded that the tissue was probably not a tongue at all, but most likely part of the brain. The faith of the pilgrims did not depend on the lab result, of course. But it is a reminder of how stories grow around holy objects. Here, the tongue remains the key image, painted at the highest point of the church.

At the main altar, look for the statue of the saint standing above a globe, with angels around him. The scene shows him rising toward heaven. Around the church, the side altars and chapels continue the theme of five. Take a moment in the centre of the floor. Turn slowly in a full circle. Every direction gives you a different view, but the space always pulls your eye back to the dome.

When you step outside again, pause at the edge of the hill. Below you are the ponds and fields of the Highlands, and the old monastery buildings in the valley. Listen to the wind in the trees and the distant sound of the town. Pilgrims have climbed this hill for three centuries. As you walk down the path, turn back once more. Watch the five points of the star catch the light, and notice how the church changes shape one last time.