2006 The Long NOT Winding Road - 1 Day, 1 Church, 1 Cathedreal (Part 2)

After walking back to the hotel room for a rest and so that Guzzisue could wash some clothes we headed across to the other side of town and to St Barbara's Cathedral. This is a large Gothic style building that is slowly being renovated.
The path to the cathedral has many sculptures that unfortunately we could not see as they were covered up, a part of the renovation plan. The outside of the building had plenty of scaffolding surrounding it.


Whilst looking around the outside things seemed a little surreal as we could here a Suzi Quatro song on a worker's radio. Things are certainly moving on as the communist bloc weakens!
The cathedral was built between the 14th and 16th centuries. It came to be built as an expression of the importance and power of the upper town by the mining communities when Kutna Hora was the economic centre of the Czech state and where the Prague groschen coin was minted.
Inside the cathedral there were polite signs asking for photos not to be taken, however many people ignored these, Guzzisue included! Her excuse was that some of the items that she was interested in were not in the guide book, nor were there any postcards to buy. There are several frescoes inside dating back to the 15th century. The one below depicts part of the minting process of the groschen.

And here are another two frescoes.



The first designer of the cathedral was John Parler, son of Peter Parlor, who built St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Originally the cathedral was to have been built with three naves and greater in length, however this was soon modified to be a five nave building and its length shortened to two thirds of the original intended length.
More information on the history of the cathedral can be found here.
There is plenty of light inside the building and when the sun shines it really shows off the colours in the stained glass windows, some of which are as recent as 1913.

The next few show how light it was inside on the day we visited.

I don't think you could buy intricate door hinges like these from your local hardware store.

Later that evening we had a gentle stroll round a deserted town before heading back to the hotel's restaurant as any enthusiasm we had for finding somewhere else had evaporated in the afternoon heat.