Baroque Outside, Gothic Memory Inside

St Michael’s presents itself as a confident Baroque landmark, crowned by domes above the old city, but that appearance is only the latest dominant layer. The church grew from a Gothic predecessor and retained medieval masonry and vaulting through an ambitious Early Baroque rebuilding in the seventeenth century. A city fire in 1709 and another major reconstruction in the nineteenth century added further edits. The result is not a clean specimen of one style; it is an architectural negotiation across centuries. You do not need to enter to understand the point. From the exterior, trace the emphatic Baroque silhouette and remember that older fabric survives within it. Religious institutions often project timelessness, but buildings are records of repeated adaptation, disaster and changing taste.