Františkánský klášter / Franciscan convent - Bechyne (South Bohemia) - Abbeys, Convents and Monasteries on Waymarking.com

The Franciscan convent (Františkánský klášter) in Bechyne with the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (kostel Nanebevzetí Panny Marie) is a complex of late-Gothic buildings located on a rock on the right bank of the river Lužnice. Its current architectural form dates mainly from the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Unique cellar-type Gothic vaults in cloister

The convent was founded on the eastern edge of the town Bechyne by Minorites in the 13th century (1281), during the Hussite wars it was destroyed and abandoned. It was restored as a Franciscan in 1491 (the first monks came on October 8 of that year), built at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries with the support of the Bechyne nobility in the demanding late Gothic period - the builders were Zdislav and Ladislav of Šternberk (1491). The vaults of the church and the cloister form the largest set of unique cellar-vaults in Czech lands. Convent was reconstructed after damage by Buquoy's army in 1619 and additions were made during th 17th and 18th century (1634 organ choir, 1664–1780 new church furniture and altars, 1673 and 1725 chapels of the Crucifixion of the Lord and the Sorrowful Virgin Mary south of the church facade). The convent was forcibly dispersed by communist State police in 1950, and eventually was returned to the Francisacn order after 1990. Franscican leased convent complex for a long time to a public service enterprise Klášter o.p.s., which runs here a Basic art school and other cultural/educational activities.

Source: excerpted and translated from Wikipedia and National Heritage Institute portal.