Rotunda of Saint Mary Magdalene, Romanesque rotunda in Přední Kopanina, Czech Republic.
The Rotunda of Saint Mary Magdalene is built of small opuka blocks from a local quarry, with a round nave 5.30 m across, a semicircular apse to the east and a slim tower to the west. A rectangular Jesuit addition on the south side now serves as the main nave, so the rotunda acts as presbytery and the tower as sacristy.
The rotunda's first written mention dates to 1352 in papal tithe registers, and a parish existed until it lapsed during the Hussite wars. In 1779 the vault collapsed; after long ruin, Karel Wiesenfeld led a restoration in 1852–1858, rebuilding the vault in wood and raising the tower.
The rotunda belongs to the Roman Catholic parish of Tuchoměřice, not the Prague Archdiocese. Its stylised silver tower on a black field appears in the coat of arms of Přední Kopanina. The cemetery gate area yielded a mass grave in 1923, likely of soldiers from the Battle of White Mountain or from a plague period.
The church stands on the northwestern edge of Prague, in the middle of Přední Kopanina, with a small walled cemetery around it. The rotunda now serves as the presbytery, the Jesuit addition on the south side as the main nave, and the tower as the sacristy, so the interior is turned 90 degrees from the usual eastward orientation. Two medieval windows survive: one at the ground floor of the tower's west side, the other on the southeast side of the apse.
The rotunda's outline as a stylised silver tower on a black field appears in the coat of arms of Přední Kopanina. The south wall of the tower has a first-floor portal read as an entrance to a gallery, hinting at a manor beside the church.
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