Kostel svatého Josefa (Krásná Lípa) Church

You will find the Church of Saint Joseph in Krásná Lipa, a local part of Šindelová in the Sokolov area. It is a Roman Catholic church that was formerly a parish church. Since nineteen sixty-three, it has been protected as a cultural monument together with its surrounding wall.

The inhabitants of Krásná Lipa attended services in the earliest times in Jindřichovic, where there was only a branch church at that time. It became a parish church only in sixteen twenty-seven. However, from approximately the middle of the sixteenth century, a chapel already stood in Krásná Lipa, and a cemetery next to it. Before the Reformation, it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Later it was rebuilt into a wooden baroque church, which already belonged to Saint Joseph. Its existence is documented by records from seventeen thirty-one about organ repairs. Every third Sunday of the month, the priest from Jindřichovic would come here to preach and celebrate mass. The parish house was established in seventeen eighty-four or seventeen eighty-five, and the small church thus became a parish church.

In eighteen eleven, the wooden structure was demolished. Already on the feast of Saint Václav in eighteen thirteen, mass was celebrated in the new stone church. After the Second World War, the church deteriorated and its condition is very poor, but the building is secured.

The church is a simple Empire-style structure with a rectangular nave and an expansive presbytery, that is, the space around the main altar, with a polygonal apse. On the south side projecting from the nave floor plan is a massive prismatic tower. The sacristy on the ground floor is covered by a pyramidal roof. The outer walls are smooth and the large windows have arched endings. Right behind the church, a cemetery stretches along the slope, surrounded by a plastered wall covered with stone slabs.

Inside there is a flat ceiling. A wooden gallery with a balustrade is supported by several columns, and the triumphal arch is semicircular. The furnishings of the church changed many times over the years. In the nineteen fifties, a drunk man broke into the church. He destroyed some original statues and also damaged an image of Saint Joseph. A statue of the Virgin Mary was therefore later placed in the side altar of the Immaculate Conception, and a statue of Jesus was placed in the altar of the Sacred Heart. Both statues date from the nineteenth century.

From the end of the eighteenth century comes a rococo pulpit, and the organ is approximately from the same period. The late baroque main altar from the end of the eighteenth century bears an oil painting with Saint Joseph, most likely from the first half of the nineteenth century. At one time, the church also contained a baroque carving of the Virgin Mary, a wooden crucifix, and a rococo stations of the cross on the gallery railing.