Chapel of St. John of Nepomuk
On a prominent rocky outcrop called Jánský vrch, rising steeply from the northern slope of the valley above the town of Jáchymov, stands the Chapel of St John of Nepomuk, built in 1734. Its silhouette is one of the unmistakable features of the local landscape and for centuries has shaped both the town’s appearance and its historical memory. Jánský vrch is no ordinary hill, but an isolated rock towering above the surrounding buildings — a place that has long attracted the attention and imagination of local inhabitants.
A number of folk legends are connected with this site. According to them, witches’ sabbaths were said to take place here, especially on Walpurgis Night. The remoteness of the rock, its dark outline above the town, and its difficult access created the perfect setting for stories about night fires, dancing and forbidden rituals. In oral tradition, Jánský vrch also appears as a place where punishments of alleged witches, including burnings, were supposed to have been carried out. These stories are not supported by judicial or archival sources and should be understood as part of folk memory and symbolic perception of the landscape rather than historically proven fact. Nevertheless, they illustrate how strongly the hill was perceived as a place of fear, superstition and a boundary between the “ordinary” world and the unknown.
From this perspective, the construction of the chapel gains an additional meaning. Its dedication to St John of Nepomuk — a saint associated with protection, justice and silence — may also be understood as a symbolic sanctification and “taming” of a place burdened in popular imagination with darker associations.
The chapel was commissioned by the married couple Jan Jakub and Žofie Vogelhaubt. It originated in the High Baroque period, when small sacred buildings helped shape both the spiritual and visual character of the landscape. During the 19th century, however, the structure underwent significant changes. In 1838–1839 a residential house was added, financed from the legacy of František Pallas, dean at St Vitus in Prague, who donated 15,000 gulden for the construction. The house was later used for practical purposes — in 1851 a glove workshop of the Kuhlmann brothers was established there — and the chapel did not serve church functions at that time. It was reconsecrated on 29 April 1873. Around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the chapel again passed into private ownership, and the adjoining house was eventually demolished sometime during the interwar period.
The most serious threat came in the second half of the 20th century. After 1945 the chapel gradually deteriorated, and in the 1980s a demolition order was even issued. The building was effectively condemned to disappearance. At this crucial moment, however, the Jáchymov archdean František Krásenský played a key role: he managed to prevent the demolition and secured a complete reconstruction of the chapel in 1987. Thanks to his efforts, the chapel survived a period when many similar small monuments vanished irreversibly. Today it is protected as a cultural monument and in recent years has at least undergone basic restoration of its exterior.
Architecturally, it is a High Baroque central-plan building. The core is formed by an octagonal nave, with a rectangular presbytery attached on the southern side. On the north side there is a vestibule, originally serving as a connecting corridor to the now-vanished residential house. In the corners between the vestibule and the nave are two quarter-circular apses. The windows are mostly arched, while the apses contain small rectangular openings. The main rectangular entrance has a simple stone frame bearing the carved date 1734.
The structure is covered by a tented roof, above the nave finished with an octagonal turret. The northern vestibule has its own lower tented roof, topped by an open octagonal bell structure that completes the chapel’s characteristic silhouette on the rocky hill.
Photo gallery here:
https://mipalfi.rajce.idnes.cz/Kaple_sv._Jana_Nepomuckeho/
