Karmeliten Abbey

The Carmelite Monastery of Maria Magdalena, also erroneously called the Reuerer Monastery, is a monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Würzburg, Bavaria, in the Diocese of Würzburg. At the site of the present Carmelite monastery, a monastery of the Magdalenes, the so-called Reuerinnen, existed at least since 1227. In the course of the Reformation, most houses of this order perished; the Würzburg monastery was abandoned in 1564. The vacant monastery buildings were handed over to the Discalced Carmelites in 1627. On March 19, 1669, the Baroque monastery church of St. Joseph and St. Maria Magdalena, probably designed by the Upper Italian architect Antonio Petrini, was consecrated by Auxiliary Bishop Johann Melchior Söllner. At the beginning of the 18th century, the monastery served as a study convent. In contrast to the St. Barbara Monastery of the Calced Carmelites in Karmelitenstraße, the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites located in Sanderstraße (as well as the male monasteries of the other three mendicant orders in the city of Würzburg) was not dissolved during the secularization. This later made the monastery the starting point for the re-establishment of the Bavarian or now German provincial order.