On the territory of the capital there is the whole range of sacral monuments of various architectural styles and religions. The Cathedral of St.Vitus, St.Wenceslas and St.Adalbert are the most famous sacral monument in Prague and create the characteristic Prague dominant. The Emperor Charles IV had it constructed as the central cathedral at the place of two older sanctuaries in the connection with the promotion of Prague bishopric to archbishopric. Matthew of Arras and Peter Parler were the main architects of the French Gothic cathedral. In the early 15th century the construction of the cathedral was interrupted and it was completed six hundred years later by the Union for the completion of the St.Vitus´s Cathedral. The cathedral was consecrated in the day of the thousand years anniversary of st.Wenceslas murder. The holiest place of the cathedral is the St.Wenceslas´s Chapel, which houses the Czech crown jewels. The cathedral is both the royal treasury and the royal tomb, in which many important personalities of the national and European history have been buried.
The most famous pilgrimage place of Prague and the whole Bohemia is the Church of Our Lady Victorious. This early Baroque church is situated in the Karmelitská Street in the Little Quarter. The attention of the pilgrims is attracted by the figure of the Holy Infant of Prague, better known as “il Bambino di Praga” enshrined on an elaborate altar in the right aisle. It is placed in a glass case and its wardrobe contains precious embroidered and colourfully decorated sacks. The Empress Mary Theresa embroidered the most valuable one. This wax effigy was brought from Spain by Polyxena of Lobkowicz, who presented it to the Carmelites in 1628.
The Břevnov Monastery of the Benedictines, the Strahov Monastery of the Premonstratensians and the Capuchin Monastery with Loreto, famous with its Baroque set of bells and Loreto treasury belong to the oldest Prague monasteries. Other important religious monuments are the Church of St.Nicholas in the Little Quarter, built in the 18th century by the father-and-son architects Christoph and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer in the style of High Baroque, the monumental complex of Baroque Clementinum, a former Jesuit College, the construction of which took nearly two hundred years, and the Bethlehem Chapel, the symbol of Hussite and protestant movement in Bohemia, where the university master Jan Hus preached between 1402 and 1413.
The complex of the Prague Jewish Town consists of the Old Jewish cemetery, the Town Hall, the Ceremonial Hall and six synagogues: the Old-New Synagogue, the Pinkas S., the Maisel S., the Spanish S., the Klausen S. and the High Synagogue. The Jewish Quarter raised in the 13th century. The recent appearance it got after its slum-area clearance and the following reconstruction at the turn of the 19th and 18th centuries. The Jewish Quarter belongs to the best-preserved Jewish sights in Europe.
