Live Nativity Scene
25th December at 3 and 4 pm.
You are cordially welcome to watch the Bethelem Scene Live in front of Loreto Facade. Don't miss this Christmas charity event!
The pilgrimage cycle path from Loreto to Křemešník attracts adults and children. Net faith journey, amazing country and pilgrimage places ... young and old pilgrims can find something for everyone.
Do you intend to organize a pilgrimage to Prague with your priest and would you like to celebrate a Holy Mass in Loreto Sanctuary? Do you intend to join the crowd of pilgrims who for nearly four centuries come to this place of prayers? Friars Minor Capuchins will gladly assist you - you are cordially welcome!
every Sunday - 7 pm. in the Loreto main Church of the Nativity
of Our Lord
Every third Sunday in the Month - Sunday spiritural music with baroque festival music, latin chant, organ or chamber music (program was temporarily cancelled).
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The Dientzenhofers - an important family of architects - had an impact on the building development of the Prague Loreto in the first half of the 18th century. Christoph Dientzenhofer began the two-phase reconstruction of the church and designed the western facade of the entire complex, which was finished, after his death in 1722, by his son Kilian Ignaz, with minor alterations. The latter is also the author of the design of the terrace with balustrades in front of the facade. In 1735, Christoph’s stepson, J. G. Aichbauer, finished the final reconstruction of the church, financed (as was most of the interior decoration) by Countess Maria Margarethe Waldstein, née Czernin von Chudenice.
What is Loreto in the truest sense of the word? The whole Sanctuary? No, only few people know that the genuine Loreto - the Holy House chapel or Santa Casa - is the small decorated chapel in the middle of the cloister. The conceptual and actual centre of the complex is the vera effigies, the ‘true form’, of the Italian model (in the Baroque account, the ‘sacrum’ of a cult object was transferred through its external form). The history of the entire pilgrimage site began with the laying of the foundation stone of the house on 3 June 1626.
The first patron and founder was Benigna Katharine von Lobkowitz; she chose an Italian in Vienna, G. B. Orsi (died 1641) as the architect of the Casa. The Prague Archbishop, Cardinal Ernst Adalbert Count von Harrach, consecrated the Chapel on 25 March 1631.
Originally, the outer walls of the house were decorated only with paintings; it was not until the 1660s and 1670s that the relief panelling of the walls in stucco, made, for the most part, by the Italian G. B. Cometa (1620-1687), was built at the expense of Countess Elizabeth Apollonia Kolowrat. The iconographic program of the decoration (consistently derived from the Italian model) includes reliefs from the life of the Virgin Mary, with an emphasis on the childhood of Christ (the cycle begins on the northern side, turned towards the Chapel of St Francis, and continues counter-clockwise): northern wall - the Nativity of Our Lady, the Betrothal of Our Lady; western wall - the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary visiting St Elizabeth and the Holy Family at the registry in Bethlehem; southern wall - the Nativity of Our Lord, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi; eastern wall - the Death of Our Lady and the Translation of the Holy House from Nazareth to Europe. The relief bays are separated by niches with sculptures of the Old Testament prophets (in the lower storey) and the pagan Sibyls (in the upper storey) - that is, those who foretold the birth of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
The interior is divided into two parts in a traditional manner by a silver (partly wooden) grille partition, with an altar in front. In the smaller space the wonder-working statue of Our Lady of Loreto is situated; made of linden wood, it copies the no-longer extant original made of cedar wood, including the darkening of the original material in the incarnadine parts. The sculpture rests in a rich, wrought silver frame from 1671, with the coat-of-arms of the donor, Countess Elizabeth Apollonia Kolowrat, née Tilly. Most of the objects in the Santa Casa (the reliquaries, obelisks, candlesticks, lamps and liturgical instruments) date from the 17th century. F. Kunz made the artificial fragments of frescoes on the rustic brick masonry of the house.
