Domek Loretański, Kraków

Domek Loretański is a compact chapel on the north side of the Capuchin church, wrapped by covered cloisters. Built between seventeen twelve and seventeen nineteen to designs by Kacper Bażanka, it brings an Italian pilgrimage destination into a Kraków courtyard: it copies the Holy House sanctuary at Loreto. According to tradition, that Italian sanctuary had been carried from Nazareth in the thirteenth century.

Its Baroque character belongs to the dramatic, richly decorative style of the period. Along the cloisters, memorial tablets commemorate dozens of people connected with Polish history, including Józef Piłsudski and August Emil Fieldorf. The chapel also holds moments of national memory.

During Mass here on the twenty-fourth of March seventeen ninety-four, Tadeusz Kościuszko received a blessed sabre. Find the commemorative plaque with Alfred Daun’s relief set into the exterior wall; it was installed for the uprising’s centenary. This was also where Adam Chmielowski, later Saint Brother Albert, took his religious habit on the twenty-fifth of August eighteen eighty-seven.

The altar’s central figure is Our Lady of Loreto, while an eighteen eighteen painting by Michał Stachowicz covers it. Even the altar tabernacle has a royal connection: King Jan the Third Sobieski gave the ebony casket decorated with miniature paintings.