Architect Soukup restored hundreds of churches, the renovation of the cathedral in Pilsen stands out

Plzeň – In the repairs of hundreds of churches and religious buildings over the past decades, the well-known Plzeň architect Jan Soukup has been involved in southwestern Bohemia. According to his projects, devastated churches and neglected monasteries were saved, and new chapels were built. The recently completed three-year reconstruction of the Cathedral of St. Bartolomew in Plzeň for one hundred million crowns, however, stands above all. Not only does the native Plzeňan have a personal connection to it, but it was also exceptional because it is rare to completely renovate a church like this, as it is the dominant building of Plzeň's square and the episcopal church, says Soukup.

"Recently, we counted, and it’s almost 300 churches in the Plzeň and Karlovy Vary regions and a few in southern Bohemia that I have participated in. Rarely, when we do a renovation, do we have the chance to finish it to the last detail. Usually, we work on the roof, the trusses, the windows, the façade, the drying, and we don’t get much into the interiors. When you repair the outer shell and see the misery inside, there’s not much joy in that,” he noted. Among the many projects that often helped save devastated buildings at the last minute, Soukup remembers, for example, the church in Horšov or in Bor near Tachov, which were successfully repaired completely. "But there really aren’t many,” he said.

According to him, the repair of the cathedral in the square in Plzeň was exceptionally complicated because everything was done simultaneously, and a large number of people worked there. "There were construction and restoration works. Each of those crafts has its logic, and everything had to be constantly compared to ensure they didn’t get mixed up or ruin something, which can happen on constructions without any bad intentions,” mentioned Soukup. The cathedral additionally prepared several surprises for the architect and builders—some pleasant and others not so enjoyable. The condition of some vaults turned out to be a problem, according to him. "When you have vaults at 25 meters, and when preparing the renovation project, you don’t have the money to build scaffolding for several million to inspect the vaults, we would go up there with a ruler and take a look. But only when you have that rib in front of your nose do you see that it’s fallen out, that it’s not holding anything anymore,” described the seventy-four-year-old architect. The vaults therefore had to be unexpectedly reinforced with special materials. "The church is still a bit shaky—due to traffic, due to wind. There could definitely become a big problem in time from those vaults,” Soukup stated.

However, another surprise was more pleasant and also a bit mysterious. For example, when the builders climbed up in the presbytery during repairs, they discovered bullets from World War II that no one knew about. "We thought that as the Germans were shooting from the tower and they were shooting up at them, something ended up in the church. But it wasn’t like that,” revealed Soukup. No one, including historians studying World War II in Plzeň, knew anything about the origin of the bullets. Clarity only came from Soukup's older brother, who was seven at the end of the war and recalled why there was shooting in the church. On the morning of May 6, 1945, before the first American liberators' tanks arrived in the city, there was a mass in the church, and the Germans wanted to drive the worshippers outside. "And because people didn’t want to leave, the Germans began shooting over their heads. We found dozens of bullets there. Even in the presbytery, there are medallions of saints, and one had a bullet in the chest, another in the middle of the forehead, and one bullet we found embedded in the wall. Nobody knew about that at all,” said Soukup.

Another surprise, much older in date, was the discovery of Renaissance paintings under the choir floor, of which nothing was previously known. They are dated to the year 1580. "We needed to reinforce the beams in the choir, so we took off the floor, and on the walls under the floor were Renaissance paintings—symbolism of faith and hope in life-size, but love was missing,” said Soukup. He believes that during the Baroque reconstruction, part of the Renaissance wall, on which there was still a painting symbolizing love, was knocked down.

Jan Soukup has received several awards for his involvement in the preservation of monuments. In addition to projects for the repairs and restorations of churches, he also designed, for example, a new chapel of St. Peter and Paul in Lipnice in Plzeň region, the first highway chapel in the Czech Republic near Šlovice on D5 highway, and participated as a co-author in the unique construction of a new Trappist monastery in Nový Dvůr.