This is Svaty(St) Emauzy Church which located in Podskali district of Prague 2, near Karlovo namesti, just north of Vysehrad, along the Vltava.(Phew) Its named after the biblical town of Emmaus. The Emmaus (Benedictine) Monastery with the Church of Our Lady and Slavic Patron Saints was founded by Charles IV in 1347 for Slavonic Benedictines. Today the church and the monastery are simply known as "Emauzy".
Regular services were held in the church until 1941, when the Nazis gave the building to the German Red Cross, where it served as a Hospital. On 14 Feb, 1945, Emauzy was badly damaged in an U.S. air raid. The 8th Air Force's 398th bomb group mistook Prague for Dresden. It's 60 B-17s dropped 152 tons of bombs on Prague in error. There were 701 civilian casualties, with injuries doubling that figure.
After the war, the monks had just started with its reconstruction, when the Communist coup occurred and the "anti-communist" monks were dragged out of the monastery to “detention monasteries”, a variation of/on concentration camps.
Repair work didn't begin again until the late 1960s, when the distinctive twin spires were added. The work was finished in 1967. The Benedictine Monks came back to the Monastery in 1990, after the fall of Communist regime.
Easter Monday 2003 saw the reopening of the church for services, after 60 years.
Photos: Now and before WWII
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