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Context and info

The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (in Czech, Kostel Nanebevzetí Panny Marie) is a church in Gothic style and it is located in the city of Most, in the Ústí nad Labem region, in the northwest of the Czech Republic.
It is said that it entered the Guinness World Records as the heaviest building (12,700 tons) to have been moved on wheels.

The construction of the church began in 1517, but continued for a long time, until a first completion in the early 17th century. Over the centuries the structure went through many variations and only the crypt of the oldest church has survived to this day.

The church is 60 meters long and 30 meters wide, has only one tower and conforms to the German late Gothic style.
The interior of the church forms a large atrium, divided into three naves by seven pairs of octahedral columns. The outer walls feature two rows of windows.
There are 16 chapels, two side vestibules, a sacristy, a double screw staircase on the eastern side and a spiral staircase on the western side. Each of the chapels has its ribbed vault and is dedicated to the patron saints of its donors: the guilds, the wealthy citizens and one to St. Bartholomew.

In the 1970s, the communist regime decided to completely destroy the historic center of Most to make room for the expansion of coal mining, after it was discovered that the city was sitting on 87 million tons of coal.
All the buildings existing in Most at the time were razed to the ground. The only exception was the church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

If you wonder why the Communist regime decided to save a church, well, we do not know.
However, there were several studies that proved the historical and artistic value of this church and 11 different projects were presented to save it.
The description below outlines the project that was finally approved. It involved displacing the church and bring it to the vicinity of the baroque hospital and its adjacent small Gothic church of the Holy Spirit (which is where it stands today).

The transfer

A detailed project was created for the move, which included some changes to the structure of the church to ensure that it would not be damaged.
For example, the walls and supporting pillars were strengthened and the right tower was demolished. The circumference of the church was reinforced with a concrete ring and the whole structure was enclosed by a steel frame.
In addition, all the houses that were on the path that the church would follow during the move were demolished and some open pits and mines had to be covered.

The whole preparation took 7 years and the mechanical engineer who took care of the design was Jiří Souček. He developed and produced some special position sensors, with the help of a computer, and made the first prototype at home in his garage.
A real test was done later on by moving a house close to Prague.

The overall task was to ensure that the church would stay in an horizontal position during the entire transfer, so that the deviation from the transport level never exceeded one millimeter.
It was not an easy task. It was clear that moving such a heavy building was a big risk and if a mistake were to happen, it would be impossible to fix it.
In addition, the path along which the church was to be moved was not only curved in an arc, but had also a longitudinal slope.

The transport base of the church was supported by 53 Škoda trucks, which moved on rails, and each truck had its own sensor.
The movement of the church was controlled by a computer running the code of a complex software that Souček and his team had developed to load, move and hold the church.
The software recorded data from the sensors on each truck in cycles of about half a minute. Based on the collected data, the software was able to determine the exact position of the truck and could performed complex calculations to raise or lower the truck by using hydraulic pistons.
All the above was done to control the displacement and minimize the shocks and possible deformations to the structure of the church.

When the church crossed a certain point, the workers dismantled the tracks behind it and repositioned them in front of the church, because the total length of the specially constructed tracks was only 160 meters.

Finally, between September 30th and October 27th of 1975 the church completed its journey, with a total of 841.1 meters and an average speed of 2.16 centimeters per minute, which is half as slow as a snail.
What remained was to rebuild the tower, which was dismantled before the move, and then to persuade the religious authority to re-consacrate the church, because during the transport it turned and the altar no longer faces the east, but the south.

If you are into the technicalities, here is a 20 minutes video showing how the move happened.

The current status of the church

In the new location, a two-storey reinforced concrete foundations were built.
The church was reopened on November 4th 1988, but the restoration of the interiors continued during the following years.
Only on June 19th and 20th 1993 the solemn consecration took place, carried out by bishop Josef Koukl.

The Church of the Assumption is the oldest preserved monument in Most.
With its exceptionally well maintained and stylistically clean Gothic features it ranks among the most important monuments of Bohemia.
It is currently used for religious ceremonies and as an exhibition of Gothic and Renaissance art from North West Bohemia.

How to get there

From Prague there are trains to Most every hour.
From the train station you can either walk for about 30 mins until the church or jump on buses n. 16 or 30 that go towards the lake (Jezero Most) and get off at “Děkanský kostel” or “Kostelní hřbitov”.