Brezje Basilica

Brezje is the principal pilgrimage church of Slovenia, and the whole building grew around one object: a painting of Marija Pomagaj, Mary Help of Christians, made by Leopold Layer in 1814 for a side chapel as a votive offering after he escaped prosecution. Pilgrims began coming, the church was enlarged repeatedly, and in 1988 it was raised to a basilica. Walls near the chapel are covered with plaques of thanks, and around a quarter of a million people come each year.

What you actually see

• The Layer painting - the 1814 image of Marija Pomagaj in its side chapel.
• The votive plaques - walls of marble thanks left by pilgrims over two centuries.
• The basilica interior - the enlarged nineteenth-century church around the chapel.
• The pilgrim scale - a shrine drawing hundreds of thousands a year.

When to go

Year round; major Marian feasts in May, August and September bring the largest crowds. Weekday mornings are quiet. Winter is cold inside.

Honest expectations

It is a working shrine and quiet browsing during services is not appropriate. Architecturally it is a nineteenth-century enlargement of no great distinction; the interest is devotional. Parking fills on feast days.

Nearby

Radovljica is north, and Bled is northwest.