kostel svatého Jana Křtitele v Manětíně Church

The Church of Saint John the Baptist is a Baroque single-nave deanery church on the square in Manětín. It is connected to the adjacent castle by a covered corridor. Since 2001, it has been listed together with the castle and the statues in the square as national cultural monuments.

A church has stood here since the Middle Ages. Manětín, together with the church, belonged to the Order of Saint John and is mentioned in a papal document from 1182. The Knights Hospitaller had a commandery here, documented in writing in 1325, and remained until 1483, when Manětín was acquired by the Švamberks. The Gothic church is preserved in its presbytery walls.

The church's present appearance is a result of a major fire in 1712. Half the town was destroyed in the fire, including the church. The estate owners, Václav Josef Lažanský z Bukové and his wife Marie Gabriela, née Černínová, therefore focused mainly on building a new church. It was built between 1712 and 1717, probably according to a design by imperial master builder Thomas Haffenecker. The construction was led by Tyrolean master mason Jan Jiří Hess. The church was consecrated in 1717 on the feast day of its patron saint.

In 1729 the parsonage was elevated to a deanery and several surrounding villages came under the church. During the reign of Joseph II, the cemetery was abolished. Only the perimeter wall remains from it. Between 1925 and 1967, the deanery was served by František Wonka, a teacher and regional historian who became known for his research into Manětín Baroque.

The church's nave is enclosed by a three-sided presbytery. On the north side is a prismatic tower with an onion dome. On the south side is a lords' oratory, which is accessed from the castle via a covered corridor above the alley.

The most precious work in the interior is the painting of the Baptism of Christ on the main altar by Petr Brandl. Since 2006 it has been protected as a national cultural monument. Brandl stayed in Manětín in 1715 and 1716. For the side altars he also painted images of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child and the Teaching of the Virgin Mary. Other paintings of saints were created by the Manětín dean Jan František Händl. The sculptures are the work of the local sculptor Štěpán Borovce. The organ from 1716 was built by the Loket organ builder Jan Leopold Burkhardt.

In the attic of the church lives the largest colony of large mouse-eared bats in the Plzeň region. Therefore, the attic was declared a site of European importance in 2009. The colony at that time numbered around a thousand animals, of which about six hundred were females, the rest were young. The second-largest colony in the region, in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Všeruby, had only about 150 individuals.