Chapel of Saint Joachim, Art Nouveau chapel in Lobendava, Czech Republic.
The Chapel of Saint Joachim is a religious building with Art Nouveau design located in the small Czech town of Lobendava. Its structure features flowing lines and ornamental details typical of this early 20th-century style, with decorative elements visible both outside and inside.
A first chapel on Jáchym hill is documented from the mid-18th century, when Lobendava residents paid for a small wooden chapel to shelter a painting of Saint Anne. The wooden chapel burned down in 1914 and was replaced the same year by the present masonry chapel, built with a fourteen-pillar Way of the Cross by Franz Eiselt of Lipová. After 1945 it lost its function and furnishings; the Way of the Cross vanished in the 1960s.
The hill is named after the hermit Joachim of a 14th-century legend, who was said to be buried inside his small forest chapel. The image of Saint Anne, bought from children in Saxony in 1716, was first placed here before moving to the chapel on Anenský vrch. The site is no longer used for worship.
The chapel stands on the summit of Jáchym hill (475 m) at the edge of Lobendava's cadastre, reached by paths up the wooded hill; the site is not in the village centre. It is owned by the Roman Catholic parish of Lobendava and is not in use, with window openings partly boarded up, so it can only be viewed from outside.
The chapel's side windows have lost their glazing and are partly boarded with planks, so the interior is open to the weather. The entrance door has two small round openings, and the doorframe carries a relief of the Eye of God.
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