Sacré Coeur Graz

The Sacré Coeur Graz is a Roman Catholic convent and school complex in the second district of Graz, St. Leonhard. It belongs to the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and operates a kindergarten, primary school and grammar school. The main building and church were designed in the 19th century and later extended in 1897. The entire site is protected as a listed monument.

The school is part of an international network of Sacred Heart schools in more than forty countries. After the Second World War the sisters returned and reopened classes, and in 1978 the grammar school became co-educational. A new kindergarten was built in 2004, and since 2017 the campus has been run by the Austrian association of convent schools. The convent chapel was remodelled in the 1960s but retains its original organ, pews and Stations of the Cross.

Visitors approach the irregular T-shaped monastery with its smooth façades and sharp west-side bends. The west wing is joined to the church, whose entrance is crowned by a sandstone statue of Mary and the child by Hans Brandstetter. Inside the chapel, a 17th-century painting of the crucifixion hangs in the stairwell, while the choir wall holds a bronze crucifix and bronze half-figures of Mary and Joseph by Erwin Huber. The long cloister corridors lead past classrooms and the modern kindergarten, linking the historic buildings with the daily life of the school.