Žďár monastery, Baroque monastery in Žďár nad Sázavou, Czech Republic.

Žďár monastery is a compound with a medieval core expanded by later additions in Žďár nad Sázavou. The complex contains the original religious buildings alongside residential quarters, farm structures, and courtyards that together form the full site today.

Founded in 1252 by Boček of Obřany and settled by monks from Nepomuk, the Cistercian abbey was burned by the Hussites in 1422 and dissolved in 1613. Abbot Johann Greifenfels bought back the estate in 1638 and re-established the monastery. After a fire on 16 July 1784, Abbot Otto Steinbach requested its dissolution, carried out by imperial decree on 13 October 1784.

The monastery's Latin name, Fons Beatae Mariae Virginis (Spring of the Blessed Virgin Mary), survives in the Czech Studnice Blahoslavené Panny Marie. Abbot Václav Vejmluva founded a noble youth academy here in 1727, housed in part of the abbey, and the prelature was rebuilt as a four-winged château-like residence with a French garden.

The complex lies two kilometres north of Žďár nad Sázavou's centre, at the confluence of the Stržský potok and the Sázava, flanked by the Konventský rybník to the east and the Bránský rybník to the west. The former convent buildings were largely demolished after 1784, so the standing core is the church, the prelature and the surviving Gothic well chapel. The monastery church, a three-aisled basilica with transept, was given the title of minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

The cemetery the review mentions is not beside the monastery: Santini's Dolní hřbitov, a plague cemetery, lies outside the monastic grounds, and the sources record it only as one of his commissions for Abbot Václav Vejmluva, alongside the Lyra farmyard and the pilgrimage church on Zelená hora. Within the walls, the medieval cloister was largely demolished after 1784; only the Gothic well chapel and a long entrance wing survive.