Franciscan Monastery complements the complex of the Franciscan Church in Prešov. It was originally a Carmelite monastery, built on a square plan.
The main façade of the two-storey monastery building has a simple entrance portal on the ground floor, next to which there is a secondary Renaissance epitaph of Kristof Króner from 1635.
During the Tököli Uprising in 1682 the monastery was badly damaged. The monks had to leave the town then. After their return, a more extensive reconstruction of the church and monastery was carried out in 1708 - 1718, led by the Košice builder Ján Tornyossi.
The Franciscan church and monastery were damaged during the bombing by Soviet planes in 1944. Only ruins of the monastery remained. The extensive reconstruction of both buildings took three years and required a large financial outlay.
After the fateful night of 13th to 14th April 1950, when all the monks in the Czechoslovak Republic were interned, the monastery was taken away from the Franciscans and, as a property of the state, it was intended for other purposes after certain building modifications - it served mainly as a youth home.
The Franciscan monastery became the seat of a number of important personalitiesthat have made their mark on our history. Among them were the literary author and leading Bernolákov Jakub Vojtech Gazda, the composer and poet Edmund Pascha, the prominent pedagogue and director of the Franciscan grammar school in Prešov Konrád Xaver Király, the painter and restorer Konrád Švestka, the leading representative of Catholic modernism, the poet Rudolf Dilong and the writer and editor Libor Mattoška.
Source: Švorc, P.: Guide to Historical Prešov. Universum. 2006. Prešov. ISBN 80-89046-35-5., www.presov.sk
Cover photo: Jano Štovka, MQEP
