Kostel svatého Václava v Nuslích Church

The Church of Saint Wenceslaus in Nusle is a Roman Catholic parish church. It stands at the corner of Vladimírova and Pod Vilami streets and faces the adjoining small park with its main façade. This neoclassicist building was erected in eighteen ninety-eight. That same year, Emperor Francis Joseph the First elevated Nusle to a royal city.

Initially, it was not a parish church, but a chapel. It belonged to the Nusle civic school for boys and girls on Svatoslavova street. Only in nineteen oh three, when the independent city of Nusle was separated from the parish in Michle, did its own Nusle parish come into being. The Chapel of Saint Wenceslaus then became a parish church.

An interesting chapter of religious history is also connected with this church. At Christmas in nineteen nineteen, Nusle catechists began holding services in Czech here. This happened even before the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Church on January eighth, nineteen twenty. The new church then shared the building with the Roman Catholic Church for some time. On the feast of Saint Wenceslaus, September twenty-eighth, nineteen twenty-three, a service according to the liturgy of Karel Farský was held here for the first time. Later, the Czechoslovak Church built its own premises in Nusle.

In nineteen sixty-two, a fire damaged the church. The arsonist irretrievably destroyed the original Stations of the Cross. The interior was thoroughly renovated in nineteen sixty-seven and nineteen sixty-eight according to a design by architect Jaroslav Čermák. The design better reflected the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council. From him comes the red sculpture of Saint Wenceslaus above the sanctuary. After nineteen eighty-nine, the interior underwent further renovation and the church received new bells. In nineteen ninety-seven, the bell Saint Wenceslaus from the workshop of Rudolf Perner in Passau was hung on the tower.

A distinctive feature of the church is the wall painting by artist Jan Kristofori from nineteen ninety-eight. It depicts, among other things, Christ's death on the cross at three o'clock in the afternoon among clouds. The same artist created in the year two thousand a modern Stations of the Cross with fourteen stops in the main nave. Until then, it was replaced by a pseudo-Gothic Stations of the Cross borrowed from the Church of Saint Pancras. The organ from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suffered greatly in the fire. The parishioners paid for its repair and in nineteen ninety-nine it was moved to the choir loft and restored again.

The church was served by, for example, Father Alois Tylínek, a prisoner in the concentration camps in Terezín and Dachau. In July nineteen fifty-seven, he celebrated fifty years since his priestly ordination here. Since nineteen ninety, liturgical celebrations from the church have extended into the surrounding Nusle streets, such as at Carnival time or on the feast of Saint Wenceslaus, the patron of the church.