The monastery at Jasna Gora is a symbolic place for Poles, because it was here that the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary is located the patron saint of Poland, to whom the faithful from all over the world make their pilgrimage. The monastery was built in the fourteenth century, and from the seventeenth century was used as a fortress, which is famous for its heroic defense during the Polish-Swedish wars in the seventeenth century. The tallest monastery tower in Poland, dating from 1714, towers above its walls. The oldest church buildings are the Gothic chapel of Our Lady of Czestochowa, rebuilt during the Baroque period, and the three-naved Basilica, erected in the fifteenth century, and reconstructed in the Baroque style in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, above whose Sacristy the Treasury is located. The Armoury, where the weapons for the defense of the monastery's fortress were stored, was built during the years 1660-1680. The seventeenth-century belfry houses the Chapel of National Remembrance, a mausoleum for the reliquaries and urns of Poles who died for their fatherland. (These include urn with the ashes of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the chaplain of the Solidarity movement who was murdered by the secret police in 1984.) Today, the monastery's former printing shop houses the Museum of Six Centuries at Jasna Gora, dedicated to the history of the monastic order and the painting of the Virgin Mary. On display there are the casket portraits with coats of arms from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; books from the Jasna Gora printing shop; seventeenth-century reliquaries; chalices, monstrances, surplices, paintings done by Czestochowa monks, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musical instruments of the group which plays the music indicating that the miraculous painting is about to be covered and uncovered, and the "dresses" which adorn the painting (one made of coral dating from 1910, and those commemorating the 600th anniversary of the painting, and the 1000th anniversary of Christianity in Poland). In addition, there are also Baroque statues of the Virgin Mary, and votive offerings (in supplication or in thanksgiving), including papal votive candles and gifts from John Paul II (an ivory statue of the Virgin Mary, a crosier and two chalices) and the medal awarded to Lech Walesa when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982, which he presented as a votive offering.
Exhibits on the history of the Church in Poland are displayed in the Basilica's Marian Room. These include mementos of Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski and a collection of votive candles from all over the world.
The most valuable works of art are kept in the Treasury, and include a seventeenth-century alabaster bas-relief, a crucifix from 1510 and a golden monstrance weighing 12 kilograms and inlaid with precious jewels, a fifteenth-century surplice of the Hungarian Pauline Fathers and liturgical paraphernalia, the "coral" set, and a 20-piece set of Meissen porcelain that was a gift from the Habsburg Archduke August III. Militaria are on display in the Armoury: medieval weapons, swords and maces of Polish hetmans, cannonballs, side-arms from Europe and elsewhere (including Africa, Persia and Japan), the trophies of the Polish king, Jan III Sobieski, gained after victory over the Turks at the gates of Vienna (swords and Turkish weapons, tapestries and a fragment of Kara Mustafa's field mosque), military standards, medals and orders of the Golden Fleece (Zlote Runo) and White Eagle (Bialy Orzel), paintings and engravings with military themes, and Polish "patriotic jewellery" from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Second World War.
Zbiory Sztuki na Jasnej Górze
ul. O. A. Kordeckiego 2
42-225 Częstochowa
Region: śląskie
Phone: (+48 34) 365 38 88, 377 74 08 Centrum Informacji
Fax: (+48 34) 365 43 43
WWW: www.jasnagora.pl