Attraction
Franciscan Church and Monastery, Cluj-Napoca
The Franciscan church on Museum Square stands on the site of the oldest church in Cluj and keeps, beneath its 18th-century Baroque appearance, Gothic walls and a cloister from the Dominican period. The complex passed through the hands of several denominations and has belonged to the Franciscans since 1725.
Foto: Yerpo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Roman Catholic Franciscan church, dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, and the adjoining former monastery stand at 2 Museum Square (Piața Muzeului), the oldest square in Cluj, about 300 metres north-west of St. Michael's Church. The complex occupies the corner of the square towards Victor Deleu Street.
The town's first church stood on this site in the 11th and 12th centuries and was destroyed in the great Tatar invasion of 1241. A new Romanesque church was built in the second half of the 13th century. It was later taken over by Dominican friars, who enlarged it in Gothic style in the 15th century and built the monastery with the support of John Hunyadi. In 1556, with the Reformation, the friars were expelled; Queen Isabella lived in the monastery in 1556 and 1557, after which the buildings became a school and belonged to the Unitarians and the Reformed. From 1693 they were given to the Jesuits, and in 1725 to the Franciscans, who rebuilt the church in Baroque style between 1728 and 1745 and raised the west tower, about 52 metres high. The church was reconsecrated in 1745.
The façade bears statues of the Virgin Mary, St. Francis and St. Anthony by the Baroque sculptor Johannes Nachtigall, who also made the pulpit. Side chapels line the south side, and the monastery keeps its Gothic cloister with an inner courtyard and a vaulted refectory resting on a single pillar. In front of the church stands, since 1898, the Carolina Obelisk. After 1949 the order was dissolved by the communist regime and the monastery housed the music high school; the Franciscans returned after 1990. The church is open for services and visits.
The complex is a category A historic monument: the Dominican-Franciscan cloister has LMI code CJ-II-a-A-07305 and the church CJ-II-m-A-07305.01. It belongs to the Franciscan Order.
Did you know that the church's main altar is a rotating altar? Behind the fixed frame there is a turning shaft with three identical niches: usually the statue of the Heart of Mary is shown, on the major feasts of the Virgin the icon of Our Lady of the Snows painted in 1730, and during Passiontide the image of Christ crucified.
Piața Muzeului nr. 2, Cluj-Napoca, județul Cluj