svatý Longin, Prague

St. Longin’s Rotunda is a preserved Romanesque rotunda, its rounded masonry marking it as a rare survivor in Prague. The building began as a parish church in the twelfth century for Rybníček, a village that existed before Prague’s New Town was created in the middle of the fourteenth century.

Its story reaches further back: before Christianity arrived, this site served as a pagan temple, and it was later converted into a Catholic chapel. Until the fourteenth century, the church was dedicated to Saint Stephen. When Charles IV established the New Town, the dedication changed to Saint Longinus.

The saint is identified with a man connected to Jesus’ crucifixion, and the tradition recorded here says he pierced Jesus’ side, regretted the act, abandoned military life, lived as a hermit, and was eventually arrested and executed. In the nineteenth century, construction of Na Rybníčku street brought the rotunda close to demolition. František Palacký intervened, and the building survived. What you are looking at is therefore not merely an old circular chapel: it preserves the memory of a vanished village, an earlier sacred use, and a rescue from urban rebuilding.