Church of Saint John the Baptist in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, Gothic church building in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, Czech Republic.
The Church of Saint John the Baptist is a single-nave building with a projecting square tower, a narrower polygonal presbytery and rectangular side tribune and sacristy additions. The tower carries an onion dome with a lantern, and the saddle roof bears a small sanctus bell turret. The nave is separated by a pointed triumphal arch, and the tower has one small window on each of three floors and a round clock face on the fourth.
Construction began in 1631 and was completed in 1634. The tower was started in 1717, raised and capped with an onion dome in 1780, and side tribunes were added in 1769. Side porches with oratories followed in 1849, and regothicizing work in 1891 brought the pseudo-Gothic furnishings.
The church is known locally as the "upper" or filial church, distinct from the parish church in the town centre. The painter Albín Polášek donated a set of fourteen painted Stations of the Cross, and works by Josef Knězek include a Resurrection and a Nativity scene. The sculptor Jan Knebl decorated the fourteen chapels of the former cemetery Way of the Cross that once stood around the church.
The church stands in the town centre, with the tower and its onion dome rising above the surrounding streets. The tower was begun in 1717, raised and given its onion dome in 1780; the clock face sits in the fourth storey. The side tribunes were added in 1769 and the side porches with oratories in 1849.
The church once held four bells before World War I; the largest, named after Saint John the Baptist, weighed about 20 centners and cracked in 1915. In October 1917 a requisition commission took three bells away, leaving only the smallest, Saint Wenceslas. New bells were installed in 1927, when a tower clock by Karel Adamec of Čáslav was also mounted.
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