Basilika Maria Loretto

The Basilica of Maria Loretto stands in the small town of Loretto in Burgenland, beside the old Servite monastery and a wide cloister. Its broad baroque façade rises between two towers topped by low pyramid roofs. Inside the cloister courtyard is the Loretto Chapel, a copy of the Holy House of Loreto in Italy. The church itself is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception and has been a protected monument since the 17th century.

The building tells a story of destruction and renewal. After Ottoman raids in 1529 and again in 1683, the church was rebuilt by noble patrons including Rudolf von Stotzingen, Franz Nádasdy and Prince Paul Esterházy. A 300-year-old statue of the Black Madonna, damaged in 1683, was rediscovered beneath the altar in 2016 and is now being restored. The Servites returned in the 19th century, followed by the Oblates of the Virgin Mary in 1964.

Visitors enter through an ornate portal with iron fittings made in Vienna in 1691. Inside, four barrel-vaulted bays open to side chapels with carved altars and painted scenes. The high altar of 1766 bears the Esterházy coat of arms, while the sacristy behind holds carved cupboards from 1723. The cloister’s Tuscan columns support ribbed vaults, and the Loretto Chapel displays a silver-crowned Black Madonna within a gilded frame. Outside, a column topped by a statue of the Virgin marks the former site of the chapel.