Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord

Church · Vinohrady (náměstí Jiřího z Poděbrad)Prague,Czechia

A black glazed-brick box in Prague under a flat tower cut through by the largest church clock in the country, daylight coming through the dial.

The Church of the Most Sacred Heart is a black brick box with a clock you can see daylight through. Its tower is 42 metres high and nearly as wide as the church itself, a flat wall rather than a spire. A round glazed dial about seven and a half metres across is cut straight through it, the largest church clock in the country, and daylight comes through the face. The walls below are faced in dark glazed brick studded with pale stone. Inside there are no columns and no aisles, only one hall under a flat ceiling with a gilded Christ at the end of it. The architect was Jože Plečnik, the Slovenian whom Masaryk had brought to Prague to remodel the castle. He drew the church three times, each version plainer than the last, and took no fee. The foundation stone went down on 28 October 1928, the tenth anniversary of the republic, and the church was consecrated on 8 May 1932. Vinohrady had outgrown its churches, and this parish had outgrown the one on náměstí Míru.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come in the late afternoon — low sun sets the dark glaze alight and the pale stone blocks stand out of it; at midday the whole wall flattens into one brown surface.
This is a working parish, not a monument — if a mass has begun, sit at the back or step out and return, and keep the camera down while the congregation is in the seats.
Time it with the market on the square — stalls run on several days of the week, and the church reads differently over crates of vegetables than it does across empty paving.

Things to do

1
Read the wall as cloth from across the square
Stand at the far corner of the paving, opposite the middle of the church, and look at the long wall rather than the tower. The dark glazed brick runs unbroken, with pale blocks set into it at intervals. Czech accounts read the pattern as ermine on a coronation mantle; once you have seen that, the wall stops being masonry.
2
Stand where nothing blocks the altar
Step just inside the doors and stop. There are no columns and no side aisles, so the eye runs straight down a single hall to the gilded Christ hanging at the far end, with the flat coffered ceiling closing the room overhead. Most churches of this size make you walk around something; this one makes you look.
3
Catch daylight through the clock face
Pick a bright morning and look up at the round dial from the square. It is glazed rather than painted, so the light passes through it into the tower and the numerals sit in a lit disc rather than on a wall. It is the largest church clock in the country and it works as a window first.