Church of St. John the Baptist

The Church of St. John the Baptist in Smetanovy Gardens near Janská Street carries only little evidence of its medieval origin. The history of the church is closely connected with the Order of St. John, also known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. This chivalric order, which was founded in the 12th century in Jerusalem, originally provided hospital care and later also sought to protect pilgrims. The order came to Bohemia in the mid-12th century. Half a century later “the knights with a white cross” spread faith in the Polish village Grobniki. In the 13th century the order moved their seat to a nearby Glubcyzce. In the 1330s Duke of Opava, Nicholas II, commissioned the building of a hospital and St. Nicholas’s Chapel in today’s Ratibořská Street near a millrace. Two decades later he entrusted the buildings to the Johannites from Glubczyce and Grobniki. Three years later the newly built church devoted to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Apostle was put into the order’s keeping.  Although for a time the order was not in good graces of Nicholas’s successor, his son John I, in 1377 the Přemyslids funded the construction of a new commendam in Opava. The building was presumably situated south or south-east of the church.

The church had a nave and transept with three bays in each section. The narrow presbytery was octagonal with broken arch windows and tuffite traceries. Not long ago the remnants of ribbed vault were still preserved in the Baroque fence wall. The church founder’s widow commemorated her husband by comissioning a ducal altar for the church. Towards the end of the century the town fortifications were moved to accommodate the building of a castle. As a result of this change, the church became a part of the inner town circle. The nave and transept of the church had to be altered as the new town walls touched the south-east corner of the church. A gate in the walls and a prismatic tower were built next to the church.

Further changes followed in 1431 when a sacristy was built in the north part of the presbytery in reconstruction following a fire. The long chapel with a vault with tuffite buttresses had a brick section nn the first floor that was used as a treasury. The treasury was accessed via a spindle staircase that has been preserved to this day in an outer tower. The church underwent further reconstructions after fires in 1461 and 1689. The latter reconstruction, which took place at the beginning of the 18th century, was carried out in the Baroque style. The Gothic pillars were walled in, almost all the windows were altered, the front got a new facade and a turret, which replaced the former bell tower.  A chamber was added on the side of the nave with a corridor connecting the church with a commendam built in the mid-17th century to the west of church. In 1713 the building was finished by Jordan Zeller in the Baroque style. The commendam was heavily damaged during the liberation of Opava in April 1945 and  was torn down. The church underwent several renovations in the course of the 19th century. During one of the reconstructions the church got a Classicistic facade, and at the end of the 19th century a new turret designed by Julius Lundwall was built to replace the old turret damaged during the war. The last extensive changes took place after World War II. The newly built wooden turret is a historically implausible replica.

In the interior there is a stone ledger of a suffragan bishop Bernard Symbalsky from Wroclaw. On the ledger there is an engraving depicting the bishop and on the sides a late Gothic inscription made after 1453. The stone of the ledger is not local, it was presumbaly brought to Opava from Nysa or Wroclaw. In the presbytery there are two valuable ledges of knight commanders from the 16th century – Jiří Lesota of Stéblov and Jiří Adelsbach of Domsdorf. Another ledger was used as a head jamb in the entrance to the sacristy. In the church there is also a sculpture The Suffering of Christ from the 16th century. The main altar is adorned with a golden auricular ornament and paintings by Ignác Günther. In the outside niche there is a sculpture of St. John of Nepomuk, which until 1950s stood near a bridge across the river connecting Opava with Kateřinky. The damaged scultpture, which dates back to the first quarter of the 18th century, depitcts the saint with his typical attributes – there is a biretta on his head and he carries a crucifix in his right hand. The palm branch in his left hand has not survived.