The first early-Baroque building in Slovakia is one of the most beautiful ones in Europe. It was built by Italian architects Pietro and Antonio Spazzovci.
It was part of the university buildings. The gem of the interior design, is the autentic all-wood main altar built in 1640, which is 20,3 meters high and 14,8 meters wide. The altar is richly gilded and polychromed. It’s made up of three altar paintings, 27 life-sized statues of the saints of the Old and New Testaments, and several smaller ones.
The main altarpiece is the Baptism of Jesus Christ, followed by other scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist depicted on cloths in the church vault. Below the church there is a crypt in which the members of the Society of Jesus and the family of palatine Mikuláš Esterházi are buried. Since 1977, it has been the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Trnava. Pope John Paul II. visited the cathedral in 2003.
