The Franciscan Friary of Bolzano (in German Franziskanerkloster) stands in the central Boden-Rentsch district and consists of the friary and its church, which hold important frescoes and works of art.
What to see
The Gothic church has a three-aisled nave and a choir with a polygonal plan under a ribbed vault, and is built mostly of pink sandstone. The bell tower, forty-four metres high, was completed in 1376 and ends in an octagonal pyramid above eight small acoustic windows. In the apse three large modern stained-glass windows, the work of the Innsbruck artist Josef Widmoser, show in the centre the stigmata of Saint Francis and at the sides scenes from his life, from the return of his clothes to his father to the sermon to the birds and his death. In the choir stands an elaborate late Gothic winged altarpiece, carved and painted, made around 1500 by Hans Klocker: in the centre the Nativity, on the wings episodes from the life of Christ, including also a Saint Clare. The organ of the north aisle, built in 1995 by Johann Pirchner of Steinach, has forty-four stops and three manuals with pedals. The Gothic cloisters, of the 14th century, keep fragments of frescoes of the school of Giotto.
A legend tells that the young Francis, accompanying his father, the cloth merchant Pietro Bernardone, on a business trip to Bolzano, heard Mass in the chapel of Saints Ingenuinus and Erhard, today part of the friary. The friary was founded in 1221; the first building was destroyed by a fire in 1291 and rebuilt in 1322, and in 1348 the church was ready for consecration. In 1810, during the Bavarian occupation, the friary was suppressed and its buildings were used as barracks until 1813, after which the Franciscans returned. The church was destroyed on 29 March 1944 by an aerial bombing and rebuilt after the war.
Visiting
The friary is in the Boden-Rentsch district, in central Bolzano; opening hours of the church and cloisters should be checked, because the sources consulted do not give them.
Our editors' tip
Look in the choir for Hans Klocker's winged altarpiece, which shows the Nativity in the centre, and then at Widmoser's windows: in the central one appear the stigmata of Saint Francis, to whom the church is dedicated.
