The tower of the Church of St. Nicholas in the Lesser Town

An undoubted dominant feature of the Lesser Town is the Baroque dome of the Church of St. Nicholas with an adjacent, equally high tower. Originally, an early Gothic church from the beginning of the 13th century stood on this site, also consecrated to St. Nicholas of Myra. There used to be a marketplace in the neighborhood as early as the Romanesque period. The Baroque Church of St. Nicholas was built in the years 1703 – 35 under the supervision of the important architect Kryštof Dienzenhofer and later his son Kylián Ignác. The Baroque Church of St. Nicholas in the Lesser Town is one of the most stylistically pure and beautiful examples of high Baroque architecture north of the Alps. The church was part of the Jesuit college complex. While the church was the property of the church, the adjacent tower belonged to the village, i.e. the Lesser Town, and therefore has its own house number 556 and its own entrance. The tower, which served as both a bell tower and a sound tower, was built later than the church by K. I. Dienzenhofer, and was completed in 1755 by his pupil and son-in-law Anselm Lurag. However, five years before the tower was completed, bells were hung on it. The tower and the dome of the church are intentionally the same height, i.e. 74 m, and both are designed to correspond panoramically with the Church of St. Vitus at Prague Castle. Vitus at Prague Castle. The bell tower was also the last tower in Prague – the bell tower. The last usher lived here until 1891, until then he was obliged to ring the bell in the event of a fire, to hang a red flag from the window in the direction of the fire and a lantern at night. The painter Jan Vochoč later lived in the apartment of the last usher. With the onset of communist arbitrariness, the State Secret Security settled in the tower