Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Baroque church in Zábrdovice, Czech Republic
The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is a Baroque church built in 1661–1668 to a design by Giovanni Pietro Tencalla for the Premonstratensian monastery of Zábrdovice. It stands on the foundations of a Romanesque-Gothic church completed in 1283, and its two western towers rest on their own wooden foundations of alder and oak, set outside the original ground plan. A polygonal Chapel of Our Lady of Częstochowa was added to the south side in the mid-18th century.
A Romanesque-Gothic church completed in 1283 stood here until it was destroyed or damaged during the Swedish siege of Brno in 1645. The Premonstratensian monastery, founded in the early 13th century, built the present church between 1661 and 1668 to Giovanni Pietro Tencalla's design. Joseph II abolished the monastery and turned it into a military hospital.
The ceiling frescoes by Josef Winterhalder the Younger, framed by Josef Pichler's grisaille work, show the Virgin Mary Victorious with patriarchs and nine choirs of angels; the design was submitted to the abbot in 1781 and painted 1782–1784. The south chapel holds the tombstone of Gottfried Waldorf (†1687) and his wife Jana Františka (†1672).
The church stands at the corner of Lazaretní and Zábrdovická streets in eastern Zábrdovice, near the Svitava riverbank. The monastery complex it belonged to was dissolved under Joseph II and turned into a military hospital, so the church is reached from the surrounding hospital grounds rather than a working cloister.
The two Baroque towers stand outside the footprint of the earlier church because they rest on their own wooden foundations of alder and oak. The south side holds the polygonal Chapel of Our Lady of Częstochowa, added in the mid-18th century to a design by Mořic Grimm.
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