Convent of St Agnes

In the northeastern corner of Staré Město is the former Convent of St Agnes, Prague’s oldest surviving Gothic building. The 1st-floor rooms hold the National Gallery’s permanent collection of medieval art (1200–1550) from Bohemia and Central Europe. In 1234 the Franciscan Order of the Poor Clares was founded by Přemysl king Wenceslas I, who made his sister Anežka (Agnes) its first abbess. Agnes was beatified in the 19th century and, with hardly accidental timing, Pope John Paul II canonised her as St Agnes of Bohemia just weeks before the revolutionary events of November 1989. In the 16th century the buildings were handed over to the Dominicans, and after Joseph II dissolved the monasteries, they became a squatters’ paradise. It is only since the 1980s that the convent complex has been restored and renovated. In addition to the 13th-century cloister, you can visit the French Gothic Church of the Holy Saviour, which contains the tombs of St Agnes and of Wenceslas I’s Queen Cunegund. Alongside this is the smaller Church of St Francis, where Wenceslas I is buried; part of its ruined nave now serves as a chilly concert hall. The gallery is fully wheelchair accessible, and the ground-floor cloister has a tactile presentation of 12 casts of medieval sculptures with explanatory text in Braille.