The Franciscan Church is a Baroque one-nave Roman Catholic church with a double-towered front, connected to the monastery on the north side. It was dedicated to St. Joseph.
Around 1380, the Carmelite Order built a new church together with a small monastery on the site of the original church. After the monks left the town in 1559, both buildings fell under the administration of the town, which used the monastery for economic and defence purposes during the Reformation.
By the decision of the ruler Leopold I. in 1661 the church and the monastery belonged to the Franciscan order from the nearby Nižná Šebastová. However, the Evangelical town council was not willing to let the Franciscans into the town even after several interventions of the monarch. They managed to do so only after the occupation of Prešov by the army in 1671.
Thanks to the financial help of Baron František Klobušický from Prešov and Baroness Šóšová from Solivar, the reconstruction of the originally Gothic church soon began, namely the presbytery and nave of the church, to which side chapels were added between the pillars. The whole façade with two side towers was modified according to the model of the Jesuit church of ll Gés in Rome. A more extensive reconstruction of the church and monastery was carried out between 1708 and 1718 under the direction of the Košice builder Jan Tornyossi. It was financially supported by the Klobušick family.
Construction work continued in the later period, when in 1732 - 1735 the facade of the church was supplemented with stucco ornamentation and four sandstone sculptures (1734). The sculptures represented St. Róchus, St. Florian, St. Francis and St. Anthony. New, more extensive building work was done on the church a century and a half later, after the great fire of December 1870, which destroyed the interior of the church, including the high altar. After costly reconstruction work, a new fire broke out on 3 December 1888, in which both of the church's slender towers burned down. Only a torso remained, which has not changed its appearance significantly until the present time.
The Franciscan church currently has four altars and a pulpit. The altar of St. Anthony of Padua dates from 1719. Altar of the Divine Heart in the central north chapel, on which is an emblem with a stork holding a piece of gold.
The Baroque façade attracts the attention of visitors with a pair of side towers. The entrance portal on the ground floor, flanked by pillars protruding from the wall, is topped with a broken triangular gable, in the centre with a coat of arms in Baroque ornamentation. Above it is a slender triple semicircular window, separated from the three smaller windows at the top of the façade by a massive cornice. There are 4 niches with statues of the saints of the monastery on the side bays of the church façade.
Inside the church there are murals by Mikuláš Jordán. The author of the oil painting of the Holy Family on the main altar is the Franciscan Konrád Švestka, who illusionary mural on the wall behind the altar depicted the original form of the altar before it was destroyed in the 19th century.
In the crypt of the temple are buried the monks.
Source: Švorc, P.: Guide to Historical Prešov. Universum. 2006. Prešov. ISBN 80-89046-35-5., www.presov.sk
Cover photo: Jano Štovka, MQEP
