On the occasion of the opening of the permanent exhibition in the National Museum in Prague in 1987 an exhibition was held in the Lobkovice Palace of textiles found in the reliquary of St Ludmila. 1Besides authentic memorials a reconstruction oTheiclothes was exhibited, made according to a fragment of one of them. This reconstruction aroused considerable attention both amongst the public and experts, so we now want to deal with the matter in greater detail. Ludmila, widow of the founder of the Bohemian Premyslide dynasty, Borivoj I, was an ardent believer in the Christian faith, and she brought up her grandson Wenceslas in this spirit. During the regency of Wenceslas's mother, Drahomira, Ludmila was murdered at her instigation in 921 at her widow's seat in Tetin. When Wenceslas came to the throne he strove to have Ludmila canonized. He had his grandmother's body brought to Prague and buried in the basilica of St George, where a chapel was built in her honour in the thirteenth century, in which a century later her tomb was also placed. In 1981 this tomb was subjected to archaeological research. A reliquary with the relics of St Ludmila was found under her tombstone. The buried skeleton was wrapped in several different woven materials. A fragment of clothing formed the second topmost layer of wrapping. Today only part of the front has been preserved, the back part and the sleeves being cut off just along the edge of the front armhole seam. The sides are open, with no sign of having been sewn together, but the length of the front part and of the sleeves have been preserved. At the neck the material is gathered into a narrow binding, the sides are widened by inserted gores also gathered under the arms. The garment is made of natural-coloured linen2 decorated at the neck-edge with a wavy line in the form of esses and on the chest with a straight-arm crossed cross. These motifs are embroidered in red silk cross-stitch. The material is well preserved except for local damage in the area of the lap, caused by fire. 3 In 1983 the fragment was conserved in the State Restoration Studio in Prague, and that was when the idea of reconstructing the garment4 originated. By laying the fragment out flat we ascertained that its form corresponds to part of an ellipse, while part of the width of the front (183 cm) enabled us to deduce its circumference. The fact that the edge of the front part was slightly rounded, the preservation of the sleeve length and the absence of side seams helped in the construction of the whole pattern. The measurements of the preserved parts were transferred on to paper and, on a scale of 1: 1, completed into an ellipse. Thus we obtained the pattern of the back part, which is the same as the front, and the width of the sleeves which, after being gathered, corresponds to the thickness of the gathering at the neck. In the preserved material a seam can be seen in the remains of the cut-off sleeve, extending the original sleeve. Perhaps the reason was a mistake in deciding on the size when measuring the armhole, as materials cut in this way become shorter after they are gathered,