On 25 March, symbolically on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, an exhibition will open to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Loreto Prague. The exhibition presents a phenomenon of Baroque devotion that is today rather overlooked: the Loreto chapels — architectural replicas of the Santa Casa, the Holy House of the Virgin Mary from Nazareth, venerated in the Italian town of Loreto.

Bohemia and Moravia belong to the regions with historically the highest concentration of these specifically conceived chapels — small in scale, yet immense in their spiritual significance. Visitors will be introduced to individual “Loreto sites” in the light of new scholarly findings. For the first time, the restored altar of the Loreto in Hájek will be presented, alongside a wide spectrum of forms of miraculous Loreto Virgin Mary Statues. Nearly forty selected artworks have been generously loaned by the owners and administrators of Loreto sanctuaries from Cheb to Mikulov, resulting in a richly varied mosaic of Loreto devotion in the Czech republic.