Franziskanerkloster Kerbscher Berg

The Kerbscher Berg Franciscan monastery stands on a hill near Dingelstädt in rural Thüringen, surrounded by a protected landscape of around two hundred linden trees. Built in stages between 1864 and 1901, the complex was first a Franciscan house of Saxonia province, then closed in the Kulturkampf, reopened in 1887, and finally taken over by the Ursuline sisters in 1994 after decades as a novitiate and women’s pilgrimage centre. Visitors walk past the old linden ring and the 18th-century Way of the Cross with fifteen stations and five grottoes before reaching the church whose entrance holds a fourteenth-century carved crucifixion brought from Zella. Inside, the converted convent now houses a family centre, while the garden and cemetery recall the monks who once lived there.