Church of Saint Giles in Rakovník, Gothic church in Rakovník, Czech Republic.

The Church of Saint Giles is a small single-nave Gothic building on the western edge of Rakovník, about 1.2 km from the historic centre. Its rectangular nave has a five-sided presbytery to the east, which is the original early Gothic chapel, and a porch to the west. Three tall pointed windows without tracery light the presbytery, and a whitewashed square stone above the main south entrance is said to have borne a chalice relief.

A chapel on this site is first documented in 1430, when a hermit named Tóma already lived in the adjoining hermitage by 1440. In 1487 the miller's ward Jiřík funded a nave added to the small early Gothic chapel, which survives as the presbytery. The church was damaged in the 1620 fighting around Rakovník, when imperial troops used the burnt building and cemetery as an artillery position, and was reconsecrated in 1641.

The church is now leased by the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church, and Orthodox services are held here; the Orthodox interior fittings are clearly visible inside. The former cemetery wall carries fourteen brick chapels with Stations of the Cross painted on sheet metal, added in 1960. A small building in the southeast corner of the former cemetery is the old hermitage, occupied by the hermit Tóma as early as 1440.

You can reach the church on foot from the town center, and the outside is visible at any time. To see the interior, check if guided tours are scheduled, or ask locally about visiting during services.

The church was used as a powder magazine by French soldiers in 1741 during the War of the Austrian Succession, then abandoned for lack of repair funds. In the 1970s socialist troops damaged it again during exercises; parishioner Miloslav Tatíček and a few volunteers restored it.