History
Church of St. Michael was erected in the fourteenth century, and at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth century next to it, on the north side was built charnel house of St. Anne. In the years 1450-1470, the church was rebuilt and enlarged. Originally, the temple was surrounded by a cemetery, and charnel served as a morgue and a burial chapel. When a ban on maintaining cemeteries in the town was issued in 1787, charnel lost its function. During the fire in 1620, the church was burnt, which forced in the years 1622 – 1631 the late Renaissance reconstruction and renovation of the temple. Unfortunately, in 1639 another great fire came, which destroyed the church and the city. After this event, it had to be rebuilt, this time in the Baroque style.
Architecture
The church was originally built as a Gothic, aisleless building, but in the second half of the fifteenth century it was transformed into a three-aisle basilica. The western tower, embedded in the nave, was added in the Renaissance period. The chancel is polygonally ended and, like the side aisles, has high buttresses.
Charnel house of St. Anne is a rotunda erected on a polygonal plan, connected with a square apse from the east. It was a unique shape in today’s Slovakia, used only in Poprad-Stojany, but there the presbytery was rectangular. The corners of the Skalice rotunda were reinforced with buttresses. The entrance was placed in the ogival portal on the west side, and above it there was a Gothic window topped with a trefoil.
bibliography:
Website apsida.sk, Skalica – karner.
Website hrady.cz, kostel sv. Archanděla Michaela (kostol sv. Michala Archanjela).