St Barbara is the patron of miners, and this is their church. It was not a bishop’s seat and never has been; it was paid for by the mining companies and the burghers of a town that was, for a while, the second richest place in the kingdom. Building started in 1388 under the workshop of Peter Parler, the mason of St Vitus in Prague, on a plan of five naves with an ambulatory and a ring of chapels. Matěj Rejsek took over in 1489 and vaulted the choir; Benedikt Ried followed after 1512 and roofed the nave with a looping rib vault carrying the arms of the guilds and mining companies, under the triple tent roof that gives the building its silhouette. In 1558 the mines faltered, the money stopped, and the unfinished west end was simply walled off. The front you enter through is neo-Gothic, completed in 1905.
The medieval paintings are the reason to come, and they are unlike anything in a Prague church. In the Hašplíř chapel (the windlass-men’s chapel) late-15th-century frescoes show miners in their white hooded coats hauling ore with a haspl, a hand winch. In the minters’ chapel the frescoes show the striking of Prague groschen — the coin the town’s silver became — blow by blow. Wall painting of medieval industrial work at this quality survives almost nowhere else in Europe.
The Smíšek chapel (1485–92), endowed by the mine owner who built Hrádek down the road, is the other stop. Its murals run to the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, the Trial of Trajan, the Vision of the Tiburtine Sibyl and a Crucifixion, with a lower register showing litterati laying out the vessels for the liturgy. The painter clearly knew contemporary Italian work.
An audio guide and a printed guide are offered at the door. The cathedral also sells a roof tour and an organ tour, both privately guided and priced for a group rather than an individual — worth an email if there are several of you.
Walk back into town along the Barborská terrace rather than the road: a raised stone promenade lined with thirteen 18th-century saints, twelve of them carved by František Baugut between 1703 and 1716, with the Vrchlice valley dropping away on one side. Locals call it the Kutná Hora Charles Bridge. It is free, it is the view of the cathedral everyone photographs, and it takes ten minutes.
