It is situated on a small island on upper Lake Zürich (Obersee) off of the Holzbrücke Rapperswil-Hurden, a historical wooden bridge that was reconstructed in 2001.

The chapel became the site of an execution after a legal dispute over a pasture belonging to the Wydenchlösterli, a nunnery on the shore of the Jona River.

In the years before the Reformation in Zürich, its last superior, Katharine Scheuchzer (Katharina Schüchter) fought that the nunnery should be dissolved, and asked the neighboring Rüti Abbey and the Old Swiss Confederacy for support.

[2] Although the Tagsatzung's verdict of 1543 was in favor of the small nunnery, after cruel torture, the old woman was sentenced by the town council to death, put in a bag, and drowned in the Obersee lake at Heilig Hüsli chapel.

The fresco was replaced by a replica by the Swiss artist Marlies Pekarek, and was inaugurated and blessed on 7 April 2011 with the intention of returning the bridge chapel to its original purpose.