Marianum

In 1868, two years after the order of the Daughters of Divine Charity was founded in Vienna, sisters of the order came to Opava to provide education for girls and care for orphans. Opava was the first place in Bohemia where the order settled. The house in Rybí Market, where the order resided, underwent a major reconstruction in 1887. However, the new reclusion, marianum, elementary school, and chapel were soon too small. When the nuns had relocated, the building was used for different purposes, and after the war the Silesian Theatre got hold of it. Many may remember the Theatre Club in the building.

The order found a new residence in the Duke’s meadows and fileds in Kylešovský Hill in today’s Rooseveltova Street, where new buildings were under construction at that time. In the years 1907–1909 a monastery called Marianum was built by the master builder Alois Geldner and architect Adalbert Bartl. The monastery, which was run by the Mother Superior Stanislava Fuss, comprised of two parts. One section provided care for elderly people, the other helped young women looking for work in town. Apart from an orphange, the monastery also housed a boarding house for girls, which later turned into a school. During World War I the activities in the monastery were restircted, and the building turned into a military hospital, which treated approximately ten thousand soldiers. When the war was over, the nuns started to take care of mentally disabled children. During the occupation and World War II the monastery activities remained the same, albeit limited by the war especially at times of bombing. The greatest post-war change took place in the 1960s when the elderly people’s home was moved from Marianum, which freed the capacity of the building for mentally disabled children, and Marianum became the largest institute of social care in the country.

The monastery was build as two symetrical stand-alone three-storey buildings joined together by a recessed pseudo-Romanesque Basilical chapel.  The front of the buildings is decorated with a bossage on the level of the first floor, arched frieze of the principal moulding, and is rhytmized by a shallow avant-corps that ends with a pediment with the sculpture of St. Joseph on the right and Madonna with Baby Jesus on the left in niches under the baldachin, both possibly made by Adolf Köhrer, a sculptor from Opava. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Chapel has a dome on a cylindrical tambour. There is a rose window in the front with a sculpture of Jesus Christ with a halo and open arms. The nave with two chapels ends with a half-cylindrical apse. There are arcades between the nave and the aisles that carry empire tribunes. The chapel has a coffered ceiling, originally whitewashed. Between the years 1923–1930 it was richly painted by a Benedictine monk Antonín Vrbík in the Beuronese style, which is inspired by the Byzantine art. It combines gold-painted areas and figuration with a typical colour scheme and distinct linearity. The chapel with its paintings is unique not only because it has been fully preserved, but also because this style is rare in the Czech lands.