Ursuline Church
The Sopron convent of the Order of St. Ursula was founded in 1746 by Mária Niggl from Vienna. The nuns came to the monastery in Sopron from Győr, and soon after their arrival the education of the young girls began. It was then that the first convent church was built in honour of the Holy Cross.
In 1773 the church was visited by Queen Maria Theresa, where she also attended mass. In place of the church with its wooden shingle tower, which proved to be too small and became dilapidated, today’s Neo-Gothic convent church was built according to the plans of Nándor Handler. The patrons of the church reconstruction were Countess Emília Széchenyi and the Flandorffer family.
The façade of the church, built in a closed row of streets, has a statue of the Immaculate Conception in the middle, and in the sculpture niche of the two corner pillars of the façade there are statues of St. Ursula and St. Angela Merici. The Neo-Gothic church tower houses three bells, all three of them are the work of the famous Seltenhofer bell foundry from 1863. Most of the interior construction - the pointed arch doors and windows, the ribs starting from the columns with thin, coloured heads - remind us of the Gothic age. However, the main altar, the side altars and the pulpit are of romantic style and some beautiful baroque sculptures made around 1740 can also be seen.
The original glass windows of the church were completely destroyed as a result of the devastation of World War II. The church’s current stained glass windows were made in 1999 and 2014.
