Maria Loreto Abbey

The origins of the monastery date back to 1623, when Friedrich Ecker von Kapfing had a small castle with a Baroque Loreto Chapel built outside the gates of Landshut. In 1627, Elisabeth Thumer von Bruckberg founded a convent for twelve Capuchin Poor Clares on this property, which she herself joined. Due to the Thirty Years' War, the nuns soon had to flee to Salzburg, where they founded another Loreto convent. In Landshut, however, the Capuchin Poor Clares enjoyed a strong influx, which necessitated an enlargement of the chapel in 1671 and a new construction of the convent buildings in 1731, as the community had grown to over 30 sisters. In the course of secularization in Bavaria, the Maria Loreto Monastery was dissolved in 1802, although 19 sisters still lived there. King Ludwig I later allowed the re-establishment of monasteries, whereupon in 1835 Franciscans of the Bavarian Franciscan Province took over the property and founded a hospitium.