kostel Nejsvětější Trojice v Hořovicích Church

The Church of the Holy Trinity stands on Palackého Square in Hořovice. It is a single-nave Baroque church from 1674. Together with the Loreto Chapel from the end of the seventeenth century and a Marian plague column from 1711, it forms a heritage-protected Baroque complex.

The construction was initiated by Count Bernard Ignác Jan z Martinic, owner of the Hořovice estate and the highest burgrave of the Kingdom of Bohemia. In 1674 he invited the Theatines to Hořovice, also called the Cajetans. In the Czech lands, this was a less widespread order and the count gave significant financial support to their settlement here. The church was built according to plans by one of the leading Italian architects of the early Baroque period, either Carlo Lurago or Jan Dominik Orsi. The first mass was celebrated in it already on March twenty-sixth, 1674.

However, the Theatines were not satisfied in the city. When a plague epidemic struck the Czech lands in 1680, the count committed himself in an addition to his will to call the Franciscans to Hořovice. From 1684 onwards, the church thus served them. The church was equipped and consecrated to the Holy Trinity only in 1697.

A curious story is connected with the monastery. It originated from what was called the Veltrubský House opposite the church. Jakub Veltrubský was the economic administrator of the Martinics. He stole not only from the subjects but also from his masters, and with this money he began building an imposing residence. The count confiscated the land and the half-built building from him and ordered that a monastery be built from the stolen money. The Theatines acquired it in 1678 and after them the Franciscans lived in it until 1950. Today the building houses the Josef Slavík Elementary School of Arts.

The church has a rectangular floor plan with a semicircular presbytery, a sanctuary, and a structured gable above the main facade. The external walls are divided by recessed fields and flat pilasters. Statues of Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Baptist originally stood in the niches of the facade.

The Baroque portal from 1674 deserves attention. In the cartouche under the count's crown is a cherub mask and two heraldic ovals. The first bears the coat of arms of the founder, a silver basin with a star from his mother of the Šternberg family, and is surrounded by the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The second shows the wine knives of his second wife Zuzana Polyxena z Dietrichsteinu.

Doors to the sacristy were cut through only in 1737. Further doors to the square were added in 1882, when regulations on emergency exits opening outward came into force. The founder of the church, Bernard Ignác Jan z Martinic, is buried in the cathedral of Saint Vitus in Prague.