Charles IV won an archbishopric for Prague and laid the foundation stone of a cathedral in 1344. Matthias of Arras built the choir in French style and died in 1352; the 23-year-old Peter Parler took over and did everything that makes the building interesting — the net vault over the choir, the flying buttresses, the sacristy’s hanging pendant boss, and the south transept. Work stopped in the Hussite wars, and the whole western half, the nave and the west front with its rose window, is neo-Gothic work of 1873–1929. The join is visible from inside: stand in the crossing and look east.
The Chapel of St Wenceslas (1344–64) is in the south transept, over the saint’s grave. Its lower walls are set with more than 1,300 polished slabs of Bohemian jasper, amethyst and chalcedony in gilded plaster, with a Passion cycle painted around 1370 above them and a St Wenceslas legend cycle added about 1509. You cannot walk in; you look from the doorway, which is the correct view anyway. In the south-west corner, a small door with seven locks leads to the Crown Chamber above, where the Bohemian coronation regalia of 1347 are kept; the seven keys are held by seven institutions and the crown is shown to the public only rarely. The bronze lion’s-head ring on the north door is pointed out as the handle Wenceslas is said to have clung to when he was killed in 935 — a tradition, not a fact.
Other things worth finding: the Golden Gate on the south side, whose Last Judgement mosaic of 1370–71 was made from Bohemian glass and is best seen in afternoon light from the Third Courtyard, free; the Parler workshop’s tombs of the Přemyslid kings in the ambulatory chapels; and the twenty-one portrait busts in the triforium, including Parler’s own and Matthias’s — high up, and you will need to look hard.
The Great South Tower is a separate ticket: 287 steps to a gallery, past the Sigismund bell of 1549, the largest in the country.
