The Metropolitan Cathedral of Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert is a Catholic metropolitan cathedral in Prague, and the seat of the Archbishop of Prague. Until 1997, the cathedral was dedicated only to Saint Vitus, and is still commonly named only as St. Vitus Cathedral.
St. Vitus Cathedral is situated entirely within the Prague Castle complex.
Ground plan of the cathedral (blue) with outlines of prior romanesque buildings (red and black)
Panorama of the transept
Mosaic of the Last Judgment at the Golden Gate (annotated)
Vitus, whose name is sometimes rendered Guy or Guido, was a Christian martyr from Sicily. His surviving hagiography is pure legend. The dates of his actual life are unknown. He has for long been tied to the Sicilian martyrs Modestus and Crescentia but in the earliest sources it is clear that these were originally different traditions that later became combined. The figures of Modestus and Crescentia are probably fictitious.
Saint Vitus, from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
The martyrdom of Vitus, Modestus, and Crescentia, from a fourteenth-century manuscript
St. Vitus Cathedral is the main church of the former imperial capital, Prague.
Martyrdom of Saint Vitus, Germany circa 1515, St. Vitus church, Flein
