Church of St. Ignatius

The Church of St. Ignatius, located on Charles Square in central Prague’s New Town, pays homage to St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. Appropriately enough, the Church of St. Ignatius is a Jesuit complex, supposedly the third largest Jesuit complex in Europe. The Jesuits had made a home of Prague almost since the founding of the Jesuit order in 1540, with twelve of the original Jesuits sent to Prague by St. Ignatius himself in 1556. Over a hundred years later in 1671 the Jesuits completed the Church of St. Ignatius, built in the early Baroque style, characterized by ornate flourishes and design breaking from the more austere, rationalistic design of the Renaissance immediately preceding before it.
The interior is simply breathtaking, already one of the more dominant buildings on Charles Square, the exterior nonetheless does little to prepare you for the incredibly rich white and red marble columns and walls, the gold lining, the statues and reliefs and stucco ceiling, the majestic centerpiece alter flanked by statues of priests and angels. Don’t forget to check out the adjacent room to the left with a small alter to Mother Mary or most notably, the statue of St. Ignatius himself that tops the church outside. What makes this statue of St. Ignatius unusual is that it’s surrounded by an aureole, a golden ring of light, which back in the day was considered downright heretical as mainstream Christians considered aureoles appropriate only around representations of Christ.