Church of St. Lawrence – main seat of the Knights of the Templar in the Czech Lands
During the reign of Wenceslas I, the Knights Templar Order acquired the Rotunda of St. Lawrence into its ownership in 1232.
The Knights Templar Order was founded in Jerusalem in 1118 to protect the increasing number of unarmed pilgrims against robbers. During a short period of time the Knights Templar managed to get to centre stage not only in the Holy Land and they gradually became one of the most powerful and wealthiest orders in Europe. The Order’s power and wealth, however, are among the reasons for its dissolution in 1312.
During an archaeological excavation in 1954 and 1956, Ivan Borkovský was able to discern the building activity of the Knights Templar Order and connected it with the additional building of a “ship” formed obliquely with converging walls, of which the face of the north wall has been preserved even in higher parts and it was integrated in the masonry of the Church of St. Anne. The “ship” was built from marl quadrics and finished with an apse, which I. Borkovský’s excavation discovered under the foundations of a Gothic and Renaissance altar of a later church, which was built on the foundations of an older altar connected with the Knights Templar church. This structural arrangement typical of all Knights Templar religious buildings, resembles the traditional layout of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but no direct link has yet been sufficiently demonstrated. Borkovský also associates the masonry of the buttress to the inner face of the Rotunda with the Templar modifications of the church (Borkovský 1957). The Knights Templar built houses and farm buildings of their commendams north of the church and thus made it the main seat of the order in the Czech Lands.
After the dissolution of the Knight Templar Order, Johannites purchased the yard with the Church of St. Lawrence, who then sold it in 1313 to the Dominicans from the Monastery of St. Anne in Újezd.
