A popular place of devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary, and the campo santo of 19th-century Kraków, situated by the Baroque Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Capuchin Order.
The Marian sanctuary in the Italian city of Loreto was developed after the Holy Land was conquered by Muslims late in the 13th century. According to legend, the original house of Mary was moved from Nazareth to Europe by Angels. Chapels modelled on the Santa Casa in Loreto became very popular in Catholic countries in the latter half of the 17th and 18th centuries, and one of the Polish promoters was Jakub Sobieski, the father of King John III Sobieski, the vanquisher of the Turks in the Battle of Vienna. The Loreto House that can be seen in Kraków was built in 1712–19 by the Capuchin Church. The central place in the chapel, surrounded by a gallery, is taken by a figure of Our Lady of Loreto. The sculpture standing on the altar is sometimes hidden by a 19th-century painting with her depiction. The beautiful Tabernacle is a remnant of the former bureau of John III Sobieski, which the king presented to the Capuchins. After the morning mass on the first Saturday of the month, members of the Loreto Family of the Rosary meet here for a joint prayer. Adjacent to the gallery is another chapel with a miraculous Baroque crucifix.
The Loreto House by the Capuchin church is also a place of national remembrance: the epitaphs in the gallery remind us of eminent Polish scientists and military leaders. The plaque mounted in the external wall of the building on the centenary of the Kościuszko Rising commemorates the events of 24 March 1794, when Tadeusz Kościuszko had his sabre blessed. From that time to the outbreak of the First World War, many Capuchins were chaplains accompanying the successive national uprisings to which Poles, devoid of their statehood, resorted. This is where Adam Chmielowski, St Brother Albert, received his Franciscan habit in August 1887.