St Nicholas Church on Old Town Square

Josef Sudek also photographed the damage to the eastern apse of St Nicholas Church, seen from Pařížská Street. This view of the church, originally blocked by the surrounding buildings, was gradually revealed in the square – first Krenn's house between the town hall wing and the church was demolished as part of the urban renewal in 1901, and then again, after the Neo-Gothic wing of the town hall was pulled down in 1948.E.g. see Kateřina Bečková, Zmizelá Praha. Staré město, Paseka, Praha–Litomyšl, 2005, pp. 42–47. Nowadays, the main southern facade is open to the square, although it was never intended for the building to be seen this way.

It was built after a plan by Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer in 1732–1737 as part of the Benedictine abbey and monastery, on the site of a former medieval friary church. The abolished monastery, positioned on the west side of the church, was pulled down at the end of the 19th century during the urban renewal. The revealed western facade was designed by the architect Rudolf Kříženecký in 1904 in a “quasi-Baroque style”.RB (PV) [Růžena Baťková (Pavel Vlček)], Kostel sv. Mikuláše, in: Pavel Vlček a kol., Umělecké památky Prahy. Staré Město, Josefov, Academia, Praha, 1996, p. 98.

The demolition of the Jewish town at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries beginning with Pařížská Street – or, as the historian Milan Pavlík put it, the “demolition rampage”,Milan Pavlík, Obnova kostela sv. Mikuláše na Starém Městě (příspěvek k poznání urbanistické a tvarové stránky díla architekta Kiliána Ignáce Dientzenhofera), in: Staletá Praha. Královská cesta, 1991, p. 186. also included the eastern side of the church. The niche with a sculpture of St Nicholas, seen in Sudek's photograph, was created as an addition to revive this side of the church. The pseudo-baroque sculpture was created by B. Šimanovský in 1905. Despite all these changes the church is an important late Baroque monument with fresco decoration by Cosma Damian Assam and sculptures by Antonín Braun.RB (PV) [Růžena Baťková (Pavel Vlček)], Kostel sv. Mikuláše, in: Pavel Vlček a kol., Umělecké památky Prahy. Staré Město, Josefov, Academia, Praha, 1996, pp. 97–100. Milan Pavlík, Obnova kostela sv. Mikuláše na Starém Městě (příspěvek k poznání urbanistické a tvarové stránky díla architekta Kiliána Ignáce Dientzenhofera), in: Staletá Praha. Královská cesta, 1991, pp. 177–192.