Spišská Kapitula and St Martin’s Cathedral

A church town on St Martin’s Hill

Spišská Kapitula is an ancient church town on St Martin’s Hill, directly opposite Spiš Castle. It is often called the ‘Slovak Vatican’. The name comes from the chapter of canons – a community of priests who lived together, prayed and celebrated Mass in common, while also looking after the surrounding parishes. The oldest mention of a Provost of Spiš, Adolf, is in a charter of King Andrew II from 1209. In 1776 Empress Maria Theresa and Pope Pius VI established the Diocese of Spiš, and the bishops have resided here ever since. After 1948 the communist regime closed the seminary and the teacher training institute, and Kapitula lost its status as a separate municipality, becoming a street of Spišské Podhradie. Restoration has been under way since 1989. In 1993 Kapitula, together with Spiš Castle and the Church of the Holy Spirit in Žehra, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The town is a single east–west street enclosed by walls of 1665 with three gates. Along it stand the former provost’s palace (now the bishop’s residence), ten canons’ houses from the 14th–18th centuries, the seminary building and the functionalist teacher training institute of 1933.

St Martin’s Cathedral

The cathedral was begun in the Romanesque style in the 1220s as a three-aisled basilica with a royal chapel (westwork) in the west front. In 1241 it was probably plundered by the Mongols and in 1289 set on fire by the guard of King Ladislaus IV, but it was soon repaired and given a second tower. It took its present form during the Late Gothic rebuilding of 1462–1478, when it became a majestic hall church with a new presbytery. In 1493–1499 the Zápolya Chapel with net vaulting and a family crypt was added to the south wall.

• The ‘White Lion’ (Leo albus) – a Romanesque travertine sculpture, the only one of its kind in Slovakia.
• A wall painting of 1317 – the oldest dated one in Spiš, showing the coronation of Charles Robert of Anjou.
• Five Gothic winged altarpieces by masters of the Spišská Kapitula workshop; the high altar of St Martin was consecrated in 1478, and the Coronation of the Virgin altar (1493–1499) in the Zápolya Chapel survives without later alterations.
• Baroque pews of 1630 with carved scenes, late-19th-century stained glass from Innsbruck, red-marble epitaphs of the Zápolya palatines.

Practical information

Tickets are sold in the Diocesan Museum (Spišská Kapitula 671/14); the information centre is open daily 9:00–17:00, and visitors enter the cathedral every 30 minutes. The basic visit without a guide costs €2.50, with a guide €3, and the extended tour including the royal chapel and the White Lion €4 (reduced tickets for children under 15, students and seniors). Large groups should book ahead. Parking is in front of the Kapitula walls. You can stroll free of charge in the Bishop’s Garden, laid out in 1741 by Provost František Barkóci (entered through the Clock Tower; restored in 2019–2020), and walk up to the Spiš Jerusalem – the oldest calvary in Slovakia (1666–1675). The cathedral is a working church, so there may be no tours during services; dress appropriately.

Nearby

Across the valley you can see Spiš Castle – easy to visit on the same day. To the west lies Levoča with the Basilica of St James, and to the south-west the gorges of the Slovak Paradise, such as the Hornád Gorge.

Official website: kapitula.sk

Photos: Jozef Kotulič, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; JSnail23 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; Jozef Kotulič, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; SchiDD, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; Pierre Bona, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; Kateryna Baiduzha, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; Ing.Mgr.Jozef Kotulič, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.