Chapel of The Visitation (Taż-Żejt)

Set beside Għarb’s cemetery on Triq Santu Pietru, the Chapel of the Visitation—affectionately known as Taż-Żejt (“of the oil”)—is the village’s original parish seat. A small church dedicated to the Visitation replaced an earlier Marian chapel around the mid-16th century and is recorded in the apostolic visitation of 1575. Rebuilt between 1675 and 1678, it was raised to parish status by Bishop Miguel Jerónimo de Molina on 29 August 1679, serving Ġarb until the larger baroque parish church was completed in 1729. Ex-voto offerings attest to centuries of local devotion at this modest rural shrine.

The present chapel is a compact limestone building with a 17th-century façade: two long Doric pilasters support a full entablature, above which a Vignola-style broken frontispiece curves towards flame-shaped finials. An arched forecourt with an iron gate leads to the entrance. To the rear rises a square bell-turret set on four arches and topped, in local tradition, with a figure of St Paul. The plan is rectangular, with a choir altar and two side altars; a small rear oratory historically served as a mortuary room for burials at the adjacent cemetery. The titular altarpiece—likely from 1651—depicts the meeting of the Virgin and St Elizabeth, with a curtain perspective flanked by Ionic columns. Later additions include a Crucifix (1920) by Wistin Camilleri, a Via Sagra (1966) by Alfred Camilleri, and two canvases (1967) by Paul Camilleri Cauchi; parish benefactor Dun Alwiġ Mizzi supported mid-20th-century embellishments.

As Għarb’s first parish church, Taż-Żejt embodies the village’s spiritual beginnings and the enduring Maltese devotion to the Visitation, whose feast is kept on 31 May, with the village festa celebrated the first weekend of July. Many historical ex-votos—now preserved in the parish museum—record healings at the chapel and safe deliverance at sea, reflecting a lived piety tied to everyday risks of island life. The chapel’s continued use for Mass and cemetery rites anchors communal memory, even after the parish transferred uphill to the present basilica in the 18th century.

Today the chapel is active and well kept under the Għarb parish. Regular worship includes weekend Masses (typically Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning), and the site remains integral to funerary liturgy given its cemetery setting. Although far from military targets, the complex suffered bomb damage during March and July 1942; subsequent repairs and recent conservation have stabilised the fabric. The chapel continues to welcome villagers, pilgrims and visitors seeking a quieter counterpoint to Gozo’s larger sanctuaries.

Taż-Żejt takes its name from a beloved local tradition: an elderly woman devoted to Our Lady, unable to afford lamp oil for the sanctuary, was instructed in a vision to bring a jar to the chapel, where she found oil flowing near the church. Pilgrims gathered to collect the oil—some for devotion, some for profit—until, as the story goes, a fire ignited the stream and the flow ceased. The episode lives on in the chapel’s popular name and in the gratitude paintings once hung inside. A simpler village variant holds that oil once oozed from the chapel wall and healed an old woman who anointed herself with it.

Beyond its restrained façade, the interior focuses attention on the Visitation altarpiece, framed by Ionic columns and a theatrical drapery motif. The side altars carry images of St Anne and St Mary Magdalene, while the 1920 sculpted Crucifix invites private devotion. The 1960s interventions—Stations of the Cross and additional Marian canvases—blend mid-century Gozitan artistry with traditional iconography. Outside, the parvis opens directly to the cemetery, visually binding the chapel’s liturgical life with the village’s rites of remembrance.