Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at Zelená hora

On 15 April 1719 the tomb of John of Nepomuk was opened in Prague and the tissue found inside it was declared his incorrupt tongue. Within four months the abbot of Žďár had a design. Santini built the whole church around the number five — five points to the star plan, five chapels, five altars, five stars in the vault, matching the five stars of the saint's halo — and set the church inside a ten-sided cloister that repeats the figure at the scale of the hill. The architecture is stranger than the programme required. Pointed arches, ribbed vaults and a rippling parapet quote the Gothic three centuries after it ended, an archaism the Cistercians read as respect for their medieval foundation. Consecrated in 1722, it was Santini's last work; he died the following year. A fire in 1784 destroyed the roof, which was rebuilt to a flatter profile. UNESCO inscribed it in 1994, citing the mathematical ratios that produce, in the nomination's phrase, an independent spatial reality.