Ursulinenkloster Graz

The Ursuline convent in Graz stands in the leafy St Leonhard district, a four-storey late-19th-century block designed by Josef Schmalzhofer. Its façades mix neobaroque curves with corner pavilions and a later raised west wing. Inside the main staircase a glass mosaic shows the order’s patron, Saint Ursula, while the procurator’s room holds a 1768 Mariahilf image and late-baroque furnishings. Eleven Ursuline sisters still live in the community today, led by Mother Franziska with Sister Andrea as her deputy. The building has served as a school since 1899, beginning with Volksschule and Bürgerschule classes that continued through the First World War. In 1930 the sisters opened a humanist girls’ gymnasium, though by 1938 most were barred from teaching and worked abroad. After wartime use as a reserve hospital and Soviet barracks, the British Red Cross occupied the site before the nuns recovered part of the original fittings and reopened the school in 1946. Visitors enter a grand staircase lined with a Ursula mosaic and ascend to rooms that still hold the 17th-century carved Madonna in the parlour and the refectory’s late-baroque furniture. The house chapel, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was rebuilt in 1963 by Franz Maitz with round-arched windows and a Walcker organ of 1975. Off the chapel’s north side lies the mirrored Marienkapelle, its 17th-century altar bearing an Immaculata panel, while the choir behind shelters a Schutzmantel-Ursula painting by Franz Carl Remp.