Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. Charles the Great, Prague, Gothic and Baroque church in Karlov district, Prague, Czech Republic

The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. Charles the Great is an octagonal building with three cupolas topped with lanterns, domes, and spires that blend Gothic and Baroque architectural elements. The structure features a remarkable star vault supported by slender arches that create an open, light-filled interior.

Charles IV founded the church in 1351 as part of an Augustinian canons' convent, giving it an octagonal nave modelled on Charlemagne's palace chapel at Aachen. Archbishop Jan Očko of Vlašim consecrated it in 1377 before Charles IV and Wenceslaus IV. Hussite damage led to reconsecration in 1498; Bonifác Wolmut revaulted it in 1575, and a 1755 fire destroyed the roofs, rebuilt in 1756.

The Nativity scene is not in the church itself but in the Bethlehem Cave beneath the Holy Steps, a chapel built after 1704 on the south side. Its walls carry trompe-l'œil stucco imitating the Palestinian landscape of Jesus's birth. The life-size figures of St Joseph, the Virgin Mary and the infant, carved by Jan Jiří Šlanzovský, date from 1738 and are the oldest surviving crèche in Prague.

The church stands on Karlov hill above the Nusle valley, with the entrance porch facing a round stone fountain basin. The Holy Steps and the Little Palestine chapels lie on the south side, reached from the church; the convent buildings were converted into a hospital in 1785.

The five New Town churches founded by Charles IV form a regular cross: St. Catherine and Our Lady on the Lawn make the north-south arm, this church and Our Lady at the Slavs the east-west arm, meeting at St. Apollinaire. Charles the Great was never canonised by the Catholic Church, only by the antipope Paschal III.