Chapel of Our Lady, Healer of the Sick

A tenant’s wife commissioned the Chapel of Our Lady, Healer of the Sick, in 1866 as thanks for her teenage son’s recovery from severe rheumatic disease. The chapel’s main altarpiece, painted in 1864, depicts actual people healed at the local spa between 1862 and 1863, set against the backdrop of the Goczałkowice landscape. Her son appears among them, immortalized in oil as proof of his cure. The painting doesn’t just celebrate abstract faith, it documents specific recoveries, turning medical case studies into devotional art.

However, the spa itself was an accident. In 1856, the Prussian government drilled 616 meters into the earth in search of salt but struck 4% brine instead. Producing salt from such weak brine proved unprofitable, so in 1860 four investors bought the borehole and surrounding lands to establish a health resort. The spa opened in 1862, and that first season 264 guests arrived, many seeking relief from rheumatic ailments. By the time the chapel was built four years later, the town had already developed a reputation as a healing destination. Devotion to Mary as “Healer of the Sick” had long been associated with Our Lady of Częstochowa, where reports of miraculous healings date to the early fifteenth century. Here, though, the invocation was literal: prayer built alongside the bathhouse, gratitude made architectural, and one mother’s relief transformed into a landmark that still stands.