Church of the Assumption and St Charlemagne (Karlov)

Prag · Tschechien · Church

The master builder made a pact with the devil to make the vault hold. When the scaffolding burned he hanged himself — the vault still stands.

High above the Nusle valley, facing Vysehrad, Charles IV laid the foundation stone in 1350 for a church with a vault nobody believed possible: a free span of 22.8 metres with no central pillar at all. The legend, set down by Alois Jirasek, says the master builder could not manage it alone and made a pact with the devil to finish it. When the scaffolding was to come down and he saw how vast the vault had grown, terror seized him that it would collapse and crush everyone in the church. He set fire to the scaffolding and hanged himself before he could see the result. The vault held. The devil had kept his side of the bargain — and took the builder's soul in payment. The star vault floats over the nave to this day.

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Church of the Assumption and St Charlemagne (Karlov) liegt in Prag, Tschechien.

Image: VitVit / CC BY-SA 4.0 — Wikimedia Commons