Bazilika Velehrad
Landmark · Czechia
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The Basilica of the Assumption of Mary and Saints Cyril and Methodius at Velehrad is the most visited pilgrimage site in the Czech Republic, a Baroque church raised over the Romanesque foundations of a 13th-century Cistercian monastery and honoured with a golden rose from Pope John Paul II in 1985.
Cistercian monks settled here in 1205 at the invitation of the Moravian margrave Vladislaus III, building their monastery on ground already carrying a spiritual memory of the ninth-century mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia. Emperor Joseph II dissolved the monastery in 1784; the buildings passed to the Jesuits in 1890, who restored the complex and its pilgrimage life. Every July the basilica hosts the National Pilgrimage on the feast of Cyril and Methodius, drawing crowds from across the country. Pope John Paul II visited in 1990, five years after Rome had already marked the church out with its highest gift, the golden rose.
What you see
In the square before the basilica stands a Baroque Marian column raised in 1676, later joined by statues of four saints in 1705.
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