Church of Our Lady before Týn

Church of Our Lady before Týn tickets: which one to buy

The twin towers of Tyn are the image of the Old Town Square, and yet a great many visitors never get inside, because the entrance is not on the square at all. It is reached through a passage in the row of houses that stands in front of the church, which looks like a private arcade and is easy to walk past. Opening hours are short, generally a few hours in the morning and afternoon on most days and closed on Mondays, and a small donation is asked.

Guided walks of the old town explain the Hussite history that the building embodies, which is the part most guidebooks skip and the part that matters. Concert promoters sell evening performances here and in half a dozen other Prague churches; those tickets get you in when the visiting hours have closed. Photography inside is restricted. Evening concerts here are short, usually an hour, and tickets are sold by touts on the square as well as online.

Visiting Church of Our Lady before Týn: what to see

A church has stood here since the eleventh century, serving the merchants of the courtyard behind, and the present building was begun in the fourteenth century under the influence of the masons who built the cathedral, including Peter Parler. The towers reach eighty metres and each spire carries eight smaller spires in two tiers, which gives the silhouette its bristling look; the two are deliberately unequal in width, in the medieval convention of a masculine and a feminine tower.

For two centuries this was the main church of the Hussite reform movement, and a gilded chalice, their symbol, hung on the front until the Counter-Reformation replaced it with a Madonna. Inside, the Gothic structure carries a heavy baroque overlay of altars and paintings from the seventeenth century. Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer who died in Prague in 1601, is buried under a red marble slab near the chancel. The pulpit and the stone canopy over it are fifteenth-century work that survived the baroque refitting intact.

Church of Our Lady before Týn opening hours and the best time to go

Get there at opening, because the hours are so limited that the church is crowded whenever it is available. The square outside is busy from mid-morning until late and is at its worst around the astronomical clock on the hour. Winter brings the Christmas market to the square with the church as its backdrop, which is the classic photograph and also the most crowded time of year; Easter has a smaller market and far fewer people.

Early morning and late evening are the only hours when the square is calm enough to look at properly. Prague in July and August is hot and full. The church closes on Mondays and during services. Allow half an hour inside, and use the passage entrance rather than circling the building looking for a door on the square. The passage entrance is on the left-hand side of the arcade and is marked only by a small sign at eye level.