Baroque Prague: St. Nicholas Church

Look at that dome towering above the Lesser Town Square. It's one of the biggest in Europe, and building it nearly bankrupted the Jesuits who paid for it. Construction started in 1704. The architects were father and son: Christoph and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer. When the father died in 1722, his son took over. The work dragged on for decades. That massive dome? It wasn't finished until 1755. Half a century from start to finish. The scale was deliberate. Inside, there's a fresco covering 1,500 square meters, the largest ceiling painting in Europe at the time. This was the Counter Reformation playing out in stone and gold. The Jesuits were trying to win people back from Protestantism. If Protestant churches were simple and plain, they'd build something enormous and impossible to ignore. It worked. Crowds came. But the price was brutal. The Jesuits went heavily into debt. Then the 20th century hit. During communist rule, secret police converted the bell tower into a surveillance post. They monitored Western embassies from up there, watching every diplomat and visitor who came and went. A church built to glorify God became a Cold War spy nest.