View of the city from Mount Olivet

Olivet Mountain in Vrchlabí

From the Chapel of St. Anne, you climbed to the rocky hilltop that towers over the town, providing a beautiful view of Vrchlabí. Take advantage of it. Some places suddenly appear in a different perspective from here.

Younger residents of the town probably don't know why the two streets that branch off at the health center and cross the factory millrace are called Calvary. The older generation will know that this was the name given to the place where, according to the Gospels, Christ was crucified. Even the top of the Mount of Olives, where you are standing, is associated with religious themes. There used to be a sculpture here consisting of two life-size figures: Christ kneeling and praying and an angel holding a chalice on a high pedestal, as if descending from heaven. The sculpture depicted the account of the evangelists, according to which Jesus, after the Last Supper, withdrew to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives and, in anguished anticipation of pain and death, prayed to his father, God, to take away the cup of suffering. The two figures face each other as if they were talking. The sculpture was shaded by a linden tree that was at least two hundred years old. Along the path to the Mount of Olives, believers could pray at fourteen images of holy helpers painted on wooden boards.

The sculpture was built in 1728 by Johann Christof Wancke from red sandstone. Together with the mighty linden tree, it formed one of the dominant features of the Vrchlabí skyline until the second half of the 20th century. Due to lack of care and vandalism, the sculpture was destroyed, and fragments of the angel statue are now in the collections of the Krkonoše Museum in Vrchlabí.

In 2023, this beautiful place with its sculpture was revitalized in a modern style, which at least somewhat approximates the genius loci of the lost church monument.