Czech Republic Guide
South Moravia
Cathedral of sv Petr and Pavel
At the top of Petrov, the smaller of the city's two central hills, stands the Cathedral of sv Petr and Pavel, whose needle-sharp neo-Gothic spires from 1901 dominate the skyline. The cathedral holds a special place in Brno's history for having been instrumental in saving the town from the Swedes during the Thirty Years' War. After months besieging the town during the course of 1645, the Swedish general Tortennson decided to make one last attempt at taking the place, declaring he would give up at noon if the town hadn't surrendered. In a fit of inspiration, the bell-ringer, seeing that the town was on the brink of defeat, decided to ring the noon bells an hour early. The Swedes gave up their attack, the city was saved, and as a reward the Habsburg Emperor switched the Moravian capital from Olomouc to Brno (well, so the story goes). The clock strikes twelve at 11am to this day. Inside the lofty nave, there's a valuable fourteenth-century Madonna and Child, but the most intriguing art treasures are the aluminium Stations of the Cross, by Jiří Marek. Constructed in the early 1960s, these get progressively more outrageous and abstract as the story unfolds, until the final relief is no more than flailing limbs and anguished metal.