Church of St. Andrew
The foundation stone of the convent church in pohled was originally dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and was laid in 1265 by the Archdeacon of Kouřim. Further reports date back to 1267, when the papal legate Quido declared indulgences for visitors to this newly built shrine. The Church of St. Mary is an early Gothic church, but it was modified after it was destroyed during the Hussite wars in 1422, when the whole convent and the monastery were plundered. The new vaulting of the nave, made in 1494, testifies to the modifications made after the Hussite invasions.
The single-nave building is spanned towards the east by a triumphal arch leading to the presbytery. However, this arch is not located on the axis of the nave, but is deflected to the north. The arch is arched about two-fifths of the width of the building, which is 9 metres, and the north wall of the church is thus extended by the wall of the chancel, which is best seen inside the building. The stone walls of the church are supported by external buttresses, which are two-tiered in the nave and three-tiered in the chancel. Between the buttresses are tall narrow arched windows, three of which have at least partially preserved their original Gothic tracery.
The church is entered through the vestibule – a Renaissance extension from the end of the 17th century, followed by the original portal, a late Gothic work from the last quarter of the 15th century. There used to be another entrance to the church – from the first floor of the convent it was possible to go directly down to the nave of the church through a narrow corridor with two preserved pointed windows. Today, this entrance, which was used by the Cistercian nuns of Vršovice to come to the convent mass, has been bricked up (it used to exit in the south-east corner of the nave). The nave of the church, 23 metres high, is covered with a net brick vault with red sandstone ribs. Each of the three ribs is topped with brackets decorated with masks. The presbytery is covered with a cross vault with a pinnacle, and the pentagonal end with rib rays leading into pilasters with decorated capitals with floral motifs.
In the western part of the main nave there is a ten-metre high chancel dating back to the second half of the 15th century. The choir is decorated with a rococo grille from 1752, but it is dominated by a baroque organ, originally a monumental instrument with 17 registers and 2 manuals by Kaspar Welzel (in 1928 it was automated by J. Melzer). Historical sources also mention the entrance to the cloister for nuns directly from the first floor of the convent. Web
