A small shrine over a spring, where people have come for centuries with bottles and with prayer. One of the most intimate places in town.
Legend has it that the water gushed forth here at Duchess Kinga’s command. Scholars see in the tale rather a memory of the Młynówka, a mill-race fed from a pond below Miejska Góra. Pilgrims know better, and come with their bottles as they did centuries ago. Kinga spent the last years of her life in Stary Sącz and died in the convent here on 24 July 1292. Ever since, her name has been everywhere in the town – over the water too.
The brick shrine has stood here since 1779. It replaced an older wooden one and survived the Austrian dissolutions. The place is linked to the healing of Prof. Marian Starczewski in 1974. In 1998 the Church recognised it as the miracle needed for Kinga’s canonisation. Since 2010 the surroundings of the spring have been revitalised.
Come here unhurried, ideally on the way between the convent and the Papal Altar. It is a quiet and modest place. There is not much to look at – it is enough simply to stop.
