If there is such a thing, I’m a church tourist. When I travel, I revel in visiting churches, and, when I can, and even if I don’t understand the language, attending services. Certainly I don’t travel to see only churches, but the mere act of being an occasional church tourist has led me to visit spectacular cathedrals around the world, including the glittering gold-leafed ornateness of Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus in Quito, the stained-glass majesty of Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Savannah and Normandy’s Notre-Dame Cathedral of Rouen, whose beauty inspired several paintings by Claude Monet. Among the most memorable, the most truly impressive, is St. Vitus, wrapped within the walls of Prague Castle, in the capital city of Prague in the Czech Republic.
On a cold, gray and rainy Sunday morning, my friend and I, traveling to Prague on a small group tour, made our way into St. Vitus. While my friend is Catholic and at least understood some of the customs of the services, I, a Southern Baptist by faith, mainly followed her lead and stood up, kneeled and sat on her cue. Neither of us knew a word of Czech, but it didn’t seem to matter, as I was so enraptured by the magnificence of the church that I silently cried throughout the service.
It took some 600 years, from 1344 until 1929, to complete the impossibly beautiful cathedral of jewel-toned stained-glass windows, mosaics, frescoes, wooden pews, incredible artistic treasures including Bohemian lions, a series of small chapels set among its cavernous sanctuary, and a choir of statues and sculptures of saints. Every corner of the sanctuary sparkled with color.
