Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary

This guide to the Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Kájov, near Český Krumlov, opens with Hussite soldiers burning down the Gothic chapel built over a spring once blessed, by legend, by Saint Wolfgang. It follows the priest Michael Pils, who rebuilt the double-naved church between 1471 and 1485 around a carved Madonna, and the disasters that followed: a lightning strike in 1690, Emperor Joseph the Second's 1785 ban on the pilgrimage, and two later imperial raids that stripped its silver and gold. Stand at the altar and you're looking at what those raids left behind.