St. Mary's, the chief parish church in Prenzlau, is a High Brick Gothic building with a three-aisled hall and three polythagonal chapels on the church's eastern site. St. Mary's dual towers dwarf the town; the legendary gables featuring elaborate tracery are worthy of a cathedral. Excavations have shown that this replaced an earlier church on the site (1235-1250), a vaulted three aisled hall church with a transept and an elongated right-angled ambulatory built from loose fieldstone.
The church was almost completely destroyed in April 1945, with a fire destroying all but the enclosure wall. However, the church's Arcardian pillars featuring rounded arches and (most importantly!) the ornate gables and elaborate tracery on the eastern side of the building survived the fire. Construction work aimed at rebuilding the church as been underway since 1970; the artistic decoration in the church's interior is currently being restored. Despite the ongoing work, the church is home to large concerts that bring together the architectural appreciation of the unique heritage site with the pleasure afforded by live music.
References:The Chapel of St. Martin is the only completely preserved Romanesque building in Vyšehrad and one of the oldest in Prague. In was built around 1100 in the eastern part of the fortified outer ward. Between 1100 and 1300, the Rotrunda was surrounded by a cemetery. The building survived the Hussite Wars and was used as the municipal prison of the Town of the Vyšehrad Hill.
During the Thirty Years’ War, it was used as gunpowder storage, from 1700 to 1750, it was renovated and reconsecrated. In 1784, the chapel was closed passed to the military management which kept using it as a warehouseand a cannon-amunition manufacturing facility. In 1841, it was meant to be demolished to give way to the construction of a new road through Vyšehrad. Eventually, only the original western entrance was walled up and replaced with a new one in the sountren side. The dilapidating Rotunda subsequently served as a shelter for the poor.