Agnes of Bohemia (about 1211–1282), daughter of King Přemysl Otakar I, turned down marriage offers including one from Emperor Frederick II, took the veil and founded this house in the early 1230s — the first double convent of Poor Clares and Friars Minor north of the Alps. She corresponded with Clare of Assisi. The convent became a Přemyslid burial place and was used for royal ceremonies; it was dissolved in 1782, decayed into workshops and slum housing, and was restored across the 20th century. Agnes was canonised in 1989.
The reason to come is the permanent exhibition Medieval Art in Bohemia and Central Europe 1200–1550, the National Gallery’s medieval collection. This is where the panel paintings from the reign of Charles IV and Wenceslas IV live: work by the Master of Vyšší Brod, the Master of Theodoric (whose panels were painted for the Chapel of the Holy Cross at Karlštejn), the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, and the Vyšší Brod and Zlatá Koruna cycles, alongside Bohemian Gothic wood sculpture, Madonnas of the “beautiful style” around 1400, and later German and Austrian work including Cranach and Riemenschneider-circle carving.
Do not skip the architecture on the way through. The convent’s own lapidarium holds architectural fragments, altar plaques and tombstones from the successive building phases, and the early Gothic church of St Saviour and the adjoining chapel are among the earliest Gothic interiors in the city — plain, tall, French-influenced, and about a century older than anything at the castle you will have seen.
It is ten minutes’ walk north of the Old Town Square, on the river side of the Jewish Quarter, and it is reliably the quietest major medieval site in Prague. The cloister garden is free to enter and open on its own seasonal hours.
