Cathedral of St Nicholas

St Nicholas Cathedral is the main church of the South Bohemian diocese, two minutes from the square, and the Black Tower right beside it is its belfry. The town’s patron, Saint Auracián, lies here; his relics were brought from the Roman catacombs in the 17th century — even though nothing at all is known of his life. How anonymous bones become a town’s patron is a story in itself.

A church has stood here since the town’s founding in 1265, and the site itself is older still: under the presbytery archaeologists found three graves from the first half of the 13th century, before Budějovice was founded. After the great fire of 1641 Italian builders remade it into today’s Baroque form, and it became a cathedral in 1785, when the Budějovice bishopric was created.

Inside and out it is freshly restored: in 2011–2013 the interior received new paint, lighting and underfloor heating, and by the end of 2025 all façades had been repaired. The high altar stands on a mensa of Carrara marble weighing over five tonnes.

Saint Auracian — and why him

Nothing is known of Auracian’s own life — the only source for his cult is a Roman “authentica”, an official certificate marking his remains in the catacombs as those of a martyr. He is thought to have lived in the 2nd–3rd century. That is neither chance nor unique to Budějovice: in the 17th–18th centuries Rome ran a special Congregation for Indulgences and Relics that systematically verified and distributed thousands of anonymous remains from the Roman catacombs into Catholic lands of Central Europe — so-called “catacomb saints”. It was a Counter-Reformation tool: after the Thirty Years’ War, freshly re-Catholicised regions (South Bohemia included) needed new relics and new patrons. So Auracian was not chosen for a particular deed or link to the town — he was more a gift that arrived by the right channel at the right time.

Concretely: in 1643 Pope Urban VIII gave these remains (originally from the so-called Catacombs of Callixtus) to Ludvík of Rosenheim, provincial of the Capuchin order in Bohemia and Moravia, on condition they not be divided. A year later, in 1644, they reached Bohemia from Rome and were placed in the Capuchin monastery of St Anne — the same monastery that only a few years earlier (1641) had survived the great fire with light damage. Only on 4 August 1670 were they solemnly transferred to the parish (from 1785 cathedral) church of St Nicholas and given to the town; that day is still remembered as a feast. Today they lie in a niche by the baptistery. Modern anthropological study has indicated the remains most likely belonged to a woman — which does not diminish the role the cult played in the town’s identity.

After the fire of 1641

The Gothic parish church burned in the great fire. Only the charred walls of the presbytery remained. Italian builders then remodelled the church into Baroque form; the Black Tower beside it stayed the free-standing belfry. The result is the silhouette you see today: a Baroque body without a great tower of its own, and a separate Renaissance watchtower next door.

What to notice inside

The Baroque interior rewards a slow look — altarpieces, stucco and the baptistery niche with Auracian. The church stands on the site of the original parish church from the town’s founding in 1265, so you are standing on the oldest continuous sacred ground in the historic centre.

On site

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