After almost three years of work to renovate St. James’s Church (Kostel Sv. Jakuba), the building is now offering visitors an unique opportunity to discover the secrets of its interior. A guided tour will lead through three different parts of the church, revealing its hidden spaces.
The tour begins outside with an explanation of the building’s origins, construction, and some interesting features of the church, before heading inside to discover the church naves.
Visitors will be able to stand from the choir nest to get a new perspective of the main nave as well as taking a close-up look at the church organ.
A video mapping of the tower vault and a multimedia experience with a 430-light holographic projection onto the roof to highlight some details of the church will end the first part of the tour.
For the second part, a guide will take visitors to the 43-metre viewpoint in the church tower. The climb, which is physically demanding because of the narrow stairs, leads to a panoramic view of Brno, including Špilberk and namesti Svobody.
On the way to the top of the tower, there will be a few stops to view some of the church’s bells, such as the Jakub bell, the largest of them all, weighing 7.5 tons. The guide will also present the clock mechanism and how it works.
The final part of the experience is the crypt and ossuary. Soon after the church’s cemetery was established, the space could no longer hold all of the deceased because of the city’s growing population. A new system was introduced whereby skeletal remains were moved to underground ossuaries a few years after their burial.
Today, the ossuary of St. James stores the remains of more than 50,000 people. Visitors can immerse themselves in the macabre atmosphere, accompanied by music composed by Brno composer Miloš Štĕdroň.
More information can be found on this website.
