Moved Church of Most

The church of the Assumption was built in Most from 1517 by Jakub Heilmann of Schweinfurt, a pupil of Benedikt Ried, as a late Gothic hall church with net vaulting - one of the more accomplished buildings of its period in Bohemia. The old town of Most stood over a very large brown-coal seam, and in the 1960s the decision was taken to demolish the entire town, some seven hundred years old, and mine the coal beneath it. Everything went except this church. Between September 1975 and October 1975 the building, weighing around twelve thousand tonnes, was underpinned with a steel frame, lifted onto fifty-three wheeled bogies and moved along four rail tracks at a few centimetres a minute for eight hundred and forty-one metres to a new foundation beside a surviving hospital chapel. It remains the heaviest object ever moved on wheels, and it stands, whole, with an exhibition on the operation in the crypt.

What you actually see

• A late Gothic hall church - net vaulting by a pupil of Benedikt Ried.
• 841 metres of track - the route the building travelled on fifty-three bogies.
• Twelve thousand tonnes moved - the heaviest object ever transported on wheels.
• An exhibition in the crypt - photographs and equipment from the 1975 move.

When to go

April to October. Two hours.

Honest expectations

Seasonal opening with limited winter hours. The church now stands isolated on the edge of a new town, with none of its old context - which is the point, but it makes for a bleak setting.

Nearby

Most is a wholly rebuilt town; the Ore Mountains rise north.