Františkánský klášter
Monastery · Czechia
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Roll into Turnov's main square and the trees on the northeast corner give way to a long convent facade with a squat bell tower, that's the old Franciscan monastery, now the town's working post office, with counters open right in its covered cloister courtyard. Maximilian of Valdštejn founded it on 1 May 1651, building the convent and the adjoining Church of St. Francis of Assisi over the following years; the church was consecrated in 1657 by the Prague cardinal Harrach. Fire struck twice, an Ash Wednesday blaze in 1707 that burned half the town along with the convent, and a second fire in 1803 that gutted the interior and later brought the facade down in a windstorm, after which an 1822–24 rebuild gave the church the plain classicist front seen today, its 1707 entrance portal the only surviving baroque element. Inside, the sanctuary still holds a copy of Correggio's Nativity on the main altar and a founder's crypt with the Waldstein family. The friars were expelled under the communist regime's Akce K in 1950; both convent and church remain protected cultural monuments.
The adjoining Church of St. Francis of Assisi was consecrated in 1657, six years after Valdštejn began the convent, by the Prague cardinal Harrach. Fire first struck on Ash Wednesday in 1707, burning half of Turnov along with the convent; a second fire in 1803 gutted the church's interior and later brought its facade down in a windstorm, forcing the 1820s rebuild. The sanctuary still holds a copy of Correggio's Nativity on the main altar, above a crypt where the founding Waldstein family is buried. The Franciscans who had held the convent since Valdštejn's founding were expelled in 1950, under the communist regime's Akce K; today both convent and church stand as protected cultural monuments.
What you see
Trees on the northeast corner of Turnov's main square give way to a long convent facade with a squat bell tower.
monasterychurchpost office