St. Nicholas Church is a large, cruciform town church set on Place Dalton at the heart of the lower town which clusters below the walls of the citadel. Due to the destruction of the French Revolution, WWI and WWII it is the most significant surviving medieval building in the town.
The church is first mentioned in 1208 as a foundation of the Abbey of Notre-Dame within the citadel, a relationship which existed into the 16th century. About this time, the silting up of one of the channels caused the centre of the town to move southwards, and St Nicholas took over from St Peter as the main town church.
The vaulted roofs in the nave and transepts were installed in the 17th century, but their weight caused the walls to crack, and as part of the rebuilding the nave was widened and lengthened, a response to the doubling in population of the lower town that century.
All the glass was destroyed during the liberation, and has so far been replaced in the lower stories with some splendid 1980s abstract designs.
References:The Jan Hus Memorial stands at one end of Old Town Square. The huge monument depicts victorious Hussite warriors and Protestants who were forced into exile 200 years after Hus, and a young mother who symbolises national rebirth. The monument was so large that the sculptor designed and built his own villa and studio where the work could be carried out. It was unveiled in 1915 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Jan Hus' martyrdom. The memorial was designed by Ladislav Šaloun and paid for solely by public donations.
Born in 1369, Hus became an influential religious thinker, philosopher, and reformer in Prague. He was a key predecessor to the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century. In his works he criticized religious moral decay of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, the Czech patriot Hus believed that mass should be given in the vernacular, or local language, rather than in Latin. He was inspired by the teachings of John Wycliffe.