For centuries, the Czech republic has been one of the least religious countries in the world. While the state secularism of the Soviet period offers an easy superficial explanation, the roots of atheism and irreligion run much deeper, from the anti-Protestant crackdowns of the Habsburg era all the way to Jan Hus and the Bohemian Reformation, a 14th-century movement that would influence over 200 contentious years of Christian theology and politics to come. Even in the new millennium, the public’s relationship with the pomp and circumstance of institutionalized religion remains uneasy. Here, spirituality speaks quietly.

But it still speaks. On the edge of the village of Nesvačilka in the Moravian countryside, a newly built church expresses an understated, naturalistic presence. Designed by Prague-based architects RCNKSK, the modest 150-square-metre structure rises from the rolling landscape as a circular form of wood and stone.

Comprising a single room with a humble rammed earth floor, Our Lady of Sorrows chapel rises from base of quarried gneiss stone, which supports seven structural raw wood beams — symbolizing the Seven Sorrows of Mary — that rise towards the heavens, converging at a skylight that sits below a delicate, ethereal steeple.

Inspired by medieval building techniques, the precisely hewn beams integrate cutting-edge CNC machining technology while utilizing traditional pegs and wedges as joinery elements. Similar joinery also shapes the light, angular wood lattice that supports the chapel’s simple building envelope, which features ink inscriptions from the many community members that contributed to the chapel’s 12-year design, finance and construction process.

Set atop the gneiss rock, the wooden wall is punctuated by slender window openings, filtering in diffuse natural light from above. A sense of verticality is underscored by the chapel’s double-height door, which amplifies each parishioner’s smallness in the face of something greater.

“Upon entry, you are greeted by five-metre-high doors, open into a dynamic space,” says the RCNKSK design team. “The perspective of the beams and surrounding structure draws you upward… What you experience is its expression, the play of light, acoustics, and scent.” A far cry from the ornament and grandeur of Baroque cathedrals, Our Lady of Sorrows conveys a quiet but resonant spirituality.