Bethlehem Chapel

The Bethlehem Chapel, founded in 1391 in Prague's Old Town, is one of the most significant surviving monuments of the Hussite reform movement. Its name fuses two meanings of bread: the Gospel of John's declaration 'I am the bread of life' and the Hebrew toponym Bethlehem, meaning 'house of bread.' From 1402 to 1412, Jan Hus preached here in Czech rather than Latin — a deliberately provocative break with clerical tradition that marked him as a heretic and ultimately led to his execution at the Council of Constance in 1415. The original structure was largely destroyed after the Thirty Years' War and reconstructed in the 20th century based on medieval records. Designated a national cultural monument of the Czech Republic, the chapel functions today primarily as a memorial to Hus and the Bohemian Reformation.