Kloster, Franciscan church in Miltenberg, Germany.
The former Franciscan church of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in Miltenberg is a Baroque hall church built after the model of Gothic mendicant churches: seven bays, a barrel vault divided by transverse arches, a recessed two-bay choir and a roof turret instead of a tower. Its grey stone facade carries two round windows, a sculpted arched portal and reddish corner quoins; a steep red-brown roof rises to a slender dark spire with lantern and cross.
The Franciscan convent was founded in 1630 and belonged to the Thuringian province. After years of war and plague, the monastery with chapel was built in 1660–1662 and the church begun in 1667 to plans by Antonio Petrini; the nave was finished in 1679, the choir in 1688, and the church vaulted in 1707. Secularized in 1803, it was resettled by Franciscans from 1836 and the convent dissolved in 1983.
The church was consecrated in 1688 under the patronage of the Assumption of Mary; in 1843 the convent adopted the patronage of the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine Franciscan theologians had long defended and which was raised to dogma in 1854. The figure-rich pulpit and the organ front of P. Adam Öhninger's 1681 instrument survive from the original furnishing.
The building is freely accessible from the outside and can be reached on foot from the marketplace just a few minutes away. Visitors should note that service times take priority and interior access may be limited when religious ceremonies are taking place.
The church has no tower: a small roof turret with a lantern and cross sits on the reddish-brown tiled roof. Inside, the pulpit with numerous figures and the case of the organ built in 1681 by the convent's own organ builder, P. Adam Öhninger, survive from the original furnishing.
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