Church of the Visitation of Our Lady, Baroque church in Zašová, Czech Republic.
The Church of the Visitation of Our Lady is a single-nave Baroque building with a five-sided presbytery and two towers topped by onion domes. Its facade has a sandstone portal with the Žerotín coat of arms, and between the towers stands a statue of Saint Michael. The nave is 36 metres long and 17 metres wide, with a vault 16 metres high.
Karel Jindřich of Žerotín, owner of Zašová, had the brick church built next to the wooden church of Saint Anne; its foundation stone was laid on 14 August 1714. The builder was Jiří Kocourek of Kroměříž, and the church was completed in 1725 under František Ludvík of Žerotín. It was consecrated on 29 July 1742 by Olomouc bishop Jakub Arnošt of Liechtenstein. The Trinitarian monastery, founded in 1725, was abolished by Joseph II in 1783.
Pilgrims have come to the Zašová image of Our Lady since 1672, when the first written records of votive gifts and pilgrimages were made. On 15 July 1725 the painting was carried from the old wooden church of Saint Anne into the new brick church. The main altar holding it dates from 1823.
The church stands in the centre of Zašová, with the former Trinitarian monastery and parish house adjoining the left side of the nave and a porch on the right. The complex also includes a two-storey monastery building and stone sculptures of Saint John of Nepomuk and a crucifix. The interior was flooded in 2009 and a general repair began in 2015.
During the 2015 restoration, conservators found consecration crosses on the walls, left from the church's consecration by Olomouc bishop Jakob Ernst von Liechtenstein on 29 July 1742. They had been hidden under later plaster for centuries.
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