Description of the attraction
Basilica Maria Loreto is located in the small village of Loreto, located in the border region of Austria in the federal state of Burgenland. The distance to the administrative center of this land - the city of Eisenstadt - is about 7 kilometers. This Baroque church is primarily famous for its chapel, built like the Loretanian chapel and attracting thousands of pilgrims.
Back in 1431, the chapel of St. John was built on this site, but a hundred years later it was destroyed by the Turks. In 1644, it was decided to build a church here, similar to the Loretan chapel, at the same time a copy of the image of the Black Madonna was made, located in the Basilica of Santa Casa in the city of Loreto itself. Already in 1659, a large monastery of the Order of the Servites of the Virgin Mary (Servites) arose around the newly built church.
Despite the fact that this architectural complex was damaged in a fire in 1781, almost all the details and decorations of the buildings were preserved in their original form. The main facade of the temple was completed in 1691; in it two powerful side towers and graceful figures of saints, installed in niches on all levels of the building, stand out.
The interior decoration of the church is sustained in the Baroque style and dates back to the 17th-18th centuries; the decoration of the numerous side chapels of the main church belongs to the same period. The main altar was completed in 1766. The walls of the church are decorated with gilded sculptures of saints, images of angels and the coats of arms of noble Hungarian families - Nadashd and Esterhazy.
The Loretan Chapel is located not in the church itself, but in its courtyard and is a free-standing small building. Its interior is also decorated in the Baroque style of the 17th century and is rich in decorations. It also houses an amazing painting by an unknown 17th century Italian master.
The church cloister itself is a covered gallery with graceful columns. As for the buildings of the former monastery, operating even before the middle of the 20th century, their interior was completed only later, in the 18th century. On the second floor of the monastery complex, there is an old library, luxuriously decorated with stucco and bas-reliefs in the Rococo era.
