Szlaki województw śląskiego i opolskiego

The Monastery on St. Anne's Mountainis an 18th-century facility that replaced a wooden religious house built in the second half of the 17th century by Franciscans. The monks arrived in these regions from Kraków and Lwów. It is presumed that due to traces of deep monastery cellars, a monastery with a church or chapel of St. George existed in this place in the Middle Ages, hence comes the original name of the hill – St. George's Mountain. The costs of erecting the foundations of the currently existing monastery were covered by Countess Maria Josepha, wife of the Minister of War of the King of Poland Augustus II, Count Peter Robert von Lagnasco from Rozmierzand Szymiszów. In gratitude for these gifts, the monastic chapter resolved to celebrate the first mass of the day for the founders. In the years 1807-1808 during the Napoleonic Wars, a field hospital was set up in the monastery for the Bavarian siege corps and French troops. Although in 1810 the Prussian authorities issued a secularization decree, on the basis of which monastery properties were confiscated and orders dissolved throughout the state, the Franciscans eventually returned to St. Anne's Mountain, where to this day they also exercise care over the Church of St. Anne. Associated with the arrival of the Franciscans on St. Anne's Mountain is a legend, according to which guards watching on the city walls of Leśnicasaw a great brightness in the sky at midnight, from which appeared Franciscans floating upwards carrying lit candles and a figure of the Crucified Christ. This legend is depicted by one of the stained glass windows in the Basilica of St. Anne. Practical information: Free parking directly by the monastery. In the vicinity, the Franciscans run a Pilgrim's House with accommodation.