St. John the Baptist Cathedral, Baroque cathedral in Trnava, Slovakia.

St. John the Baptist Cathedral is an early Baroque church in Trnava, in western Slovakia, built with a single nave and two towers on its western facade. The interior is covered in elaborate stucco decoration, and a large wooden altar stands at the far end of the chancel.

Work on the church started in 1629, commissioned by the Jesuits who had established a strong presence in Trnava after it became an important Catholic center in the region. The building was designed by Italian architects Antonio and Pietro Spazzi and set a new direction for religious architecture in the area.

The church hosted theological disputations and university graduations, not only services, as part of Trnava University founded in 1635 by Cardinal Péter Pázmány. In the presbytery hang eight mortuary shields of the Esterházy family and Imre Ocskay; four Esterházy brothers died at the battle of Veľké Vozokany in 1652. The early Baroque pulpit of 1637 is by B. Knilling and V. Stadler.

The cathedral sits in the old town center of Trnava and is easy to reach on foot from most of the city. Try to visit outside of regular Mass times if you want to walk through the interior freely and take time with the decoration.

The wooden high altar inside the church is considered one of the largest of its kind in Europe, yet the building's plain exterior gives no hint of its scale. This contrast between the sober facade and the richly carved interior is something most visitors notice only once they step inside.