Sázava Monastery

Sázava Monastery (Czech: Sázavský klášter) is a former Benedictine abbey and a monastery in Bohemia (Czech Republic), established by Bretislaus I, Duke of Bohemia around 1032.

It is situated some 30 km southeast of Prague, on the right bank of the eponymous Sázava river, a right tributary of the Vltava.

The town of Sázava (Benešov District) grew around the monastery.

The monastery is notable, long after its foundation by St Procopius of Sázava, for having followed the Byzantine Rite in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language in the 11th century. It was forcibly transferred to the Latin rite in 1097, but remained a monastery until its destruction during the Hussite Wars in 1421.

It was again re-established as part of the re-catholization of Bohemia under Habsburg rule in 1664 and finally dissolved under the policy of Josephinism in 1785.

The extant buildings mostly date to the Baroque period, with 19th-century neo-Renaissance extensions, with some remaining structures in the Gothic style of the 13th to 14th centuries, notably the unfinished three-nave Gothic basilica.

Text adapted from “Sázava Monastery” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sázava Monastery ranks #1,261 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #32 of the 200 mapped in Czech Republic. Founded 1032, it is older than 91% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 317 atlas entries founded in the 11th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 6,283 times in the last 60 days, more than 87% of the atlas. Wikidata records about 9,440 visitors in 2022. 5 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Prague, 41 km away. It is one of the 156 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Bohemia. See how Czech Republic compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗