Hochberg Chapel (Wroclaw)

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This chapel was built between 1723-1728 on the foundations of an earlier Gothic chapel, and was designed by Christoph Hackner. It was commissioned by Count Ferdinand von Hochberg, abbot of the attatched Premonstratensian monastery (now the university's Faculty of Philology), as a burial chapel for his family. Regarded as an outstanding example of Austrian Baroque style, the interior of the chapel was richly decorated with frescoes and stucco sculptures. The dome was painted with frescoes depicting the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, completed in 1725 by the sculptor Johann Georg Urbanski and stone ornaments for the chapel were provided by the workshop of Johann Adam Karinger. The ornate chapel grille was widely regarded as a masterpiece of blacksmithing. The altar of the chapel was made of blue marble, and on it was placed a 15th-century Pietà, surrounded by statues of Our Lady, St. Barbara and St. John Nepomuk.
The interior of the chapel was badly damaged during the Siege of Breslau at the end of WWII, and the frescoes and stucco decoration were mostly destroyed. After Breslau was annexed to Poland, the chapel was left to decay by the Communist authorities, which secularized the building. Minor stabilization and security work was undertaken by the Polish government in 1991. However, in 2000 the church building was purchased by the Greek Catholic church, who launched a full-scale restoration of the chapel which continues to this day.