Kaple svatého Jana Nepomuckého (Letohrad) Chapel

The chapel of St. John Nepomuk stands on a height called Kopecek at an altitude of 432 meters above the city of Letohrad. This building has deep roots in religious history associated with the efforts of the Catholic Church to strengthen faith after the end of the Thirty Years' War.

The beginnings of this pilgrimage date back to 1629, when missionary crosses were built on the local designs - nine of them were created in the vicinity of Kyvěrek, three of them on Kopěk. The Династie Kolovrat later became a promoter of the Cult of St. John Nepomuk and in 1714 she built a small chapel in the place of the original three missionary crosses. Just this year, the first Midsummer pilgrimage took place, which soon became a traditional event.

In 1734 Jan Václav Breda broke down the old chapel and in its place built a new building more appropriately adapted to the growing number of pilgrims. The builder was Donát Theodor Morazzi from Chrudim. Two years later, in 1736, protective ambitions were built around the chapel to protect visitors from adverse weather. In the same year, the city planted a lime alley along the road from Letohrad to the ridge of Kopečka towards the chapel.

The architecture of the chapel is based on a unique idea: a plan of the shape of a pentagon by five stars around the head of St. John Nepomuk. Each star symbolizes one of its virtues - faith, hope, love, charity and strength. The same pentagon plan retains ambition and the inner altar. All five corners of ambition are decorated with onion towers in which the bells are hung. One of the original five confessions was preserved in the '80s.

The inside of the chapel is decorated by a five-sided altar with five doors of the shrine, on which are carved key moments from the life of St. John Nepomuk: the journey to Old Bloslav, the confession of Queen Jofie, the torture of the lark, the burning of pitch trees and the overthrow of the Prague bridge to the Vltava. On the five corners of the altar stands statues of virtue - faith, love, hope, generosity and bravery. The height of the statue of the saint himself. The walls and ceiling were originally richly painted, but later suffered from moisture. In 1864 the plaster was restored, but the original frescoes unfortunately failed to be rescued. In 1847, the crossroads in the амbits came from the hands of the jewellery painters Dominik Umlauf and his son John. The Temple of the Holy Trinity and the altar of St. Anthony of Padua are also part of the амbits.

Recently, the chapel underwent a complex renewal. In the framework of the Architectural Heritage Rescue Programme, CZK 3 602 000 was dedicated to the repair between 1995 and 2014. At the end of 2024, the Roman Catholic Church donated the chapel to the city of Letohrad, which it plans to build here the Memorial of Baroque pilgrims.