Karmelitenkloster Geldern

Count Rainald I of Geldern established the monastery in 1306. Extensive construction work on the monastery church of St. Maria Magdalena and the convent buildings is documented from 1339 onwards. In honor of the elevation of his son, Count Rainald II, to Duke, the complex was expanded in 1340, and a cloister was built. During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1703, the monastery sustained damage during the eight-month siege and bombardment of Geldern. Following the occupation of the Rhineland by French troops, the monastery was secularized in 1802, and the monastery church was converted into a parish church. Most of the monastic buildings were gradually demolished after 1808; only the presbytery building remains to this day. Gottfried von Greveray, an auxiliary bishop of Cambrai and a native Carmelite of Geldern, gifted the city the relics of Saints Galenus and Valenus in 1478, who have since been regarded as Geldern's patron saints. The extensive monastery archive is currently preserved in the Main State Archive in Düsseldorf. North of the men's monastery, a Carmelite nunnery also existed, which formed around 1400 from three beguinages and was officially incorporated into the Carmelite Order in 1452. This convent was also dissolved in 1802, and its buildings were destroyed by bombing in 1945.

The Carmelite Monastery of Geldern was situated in Kleve, North Rhine-Westphalia, at an elevation of approximately 29 meters above sea level.

Today, the Geldern City Library stands on parts of the original foundations of the former Carmelite Monastery. The former presbytery building is the only surviving structure of the monastery. Archaeological excavations, particularly in 1998 and 2008, have uncovered remains of the cloister and a connecting passage to St. Maria Magdalena Church, offering insights into the construction history and the destruction of 1703. The monastery area is protected as an archaeological monument.

• Geldern Castle Ruin (Castle, approx. 570 m away)
• Golten Castle (Castle, approx. 1424 m away)
• Haag Castle (Castle, approx. 1959 m away)
• Haus Gross Horsthof (Manor and Estate, approx. 2203 m away)