AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Botzen Chapel is a small late-Baroque field chapel perched on the slope of Partyzánský vrch hill above the village of Císařský, in the Šluknov corner of northern Bohemia. Built in 1796, left to crumble into a ruin over decades, and triumphantly restored in 2014 by local volunteers, it stands today as one of the most quietly romantic spots in the Šluknov Highlands — a place where open meadow, distant views, and a story of community persistence converge.↗↗
A Farmer's Devotion on the Hillside
In 1796 a local farmer named Josef Mautsch had this chapel built beside a field path connecting Císařský to the village of Velký Šenov. The path ran along the slopes of a hill then known by its German name, Botzen, and the chapel took its enduring nickname — Botzen Kapelle — from that landscape. It was consecrated to the Virgin Mary, and for generations villagers made their way here for devotions during Marian feast days. A locally told legend even speaks of a child miraculously cured of an eye illness at this spot.↗
The chapel's living tradition was severed after World War II, when the original German-speaking inhabitants of Císařský (then called Kaiserwalde) were expelled. Without a community to tend it, the little building decayed steadily through the second half of the twentieth century until nothing remained but a torso of collapsed outer walls. At one point the private landowner considered clearing the ruin entirely.
