Antoniterkloster Grünberg

The Antoniterkloster in Grünberg stands on a trapezoidal plot in the old town. The complex includes a former church on the west side, the monks’ building on the north, the university building on the east, the main castle block on the south, and a separate structure across Rosengasse. A city wall once formed the northern boundary of the monastery grounds. The site became one of the order’s most important houses in central Europe. From Grünberg the Antonites ran daughter houses from Friedberg to Bergen in Norway and from Wetzlar to modern Latvia. The last preceptor died in 1526, after which Landgrave Philipp secularised the monastery and gave its lands to the University of Marburg. His son later turned the remaining buildings into a residence for his widowed wife Hedwig. Visitors walk through a stone-walled courtyard framed by half-timbered wings. The church’s Gothic sacristy window and massive buttresses survive on the west side. The north wing, once the refectory, shows fine timber framing from around 1500. The south wing, rebuilt as a three-storey residence in the 1570s, has a carved inscription naming master builder Hans Kravskopf and a relief of a monk bearing the order’s cross. Against the east wall stands a 29-metre-long granary whose walls display rare St Andrew’s bracing.