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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Convent of the Recollets of Rouffach, located in the Upper Rhine, finds its origins in the 13th century with the installation of the Franciscan brothers around 1250. The latter built a priory, then a church dedicated to St.Catherine of Alexandria between 1280 and 1310, accompanied by a cloister financed by Brother Blodelin. The convent, integrated into the Provincia Argentina (Congregation of Strasbourg), adopted in 1435 the reform of the Observance, thus becoming a convent of recollets (reformed Franciscans). In the 15th century, it houses a renowned humanist school, frequented by figures such as Sebastian Münster or Conrad Pellican, and shares its church with the Teutonic Knights installed nearby.

In the 16th century, the convent declined: abandoned in 1564, it was partially destroyed by a fire in 1565. Rehearsed in 1591 thanks to Count Eberhard of Manderscheid-Blankenheim (grand-bailli de Rouffach), he returned to his educational vocation in the 18th century, teaching Latin and rhetoric. The French Revolution marked a turning point: secularized in 1791, the site became barracks, military hospital, and then prison. The church, sold to bourgeois, was restored to worship in 1797 before being restored in 1840. The convent buildings, transformed into a cantonal court under German administration (1870), now house the municipal archives and an exhibition hall.

The architecture of the site combines Gothic and Baroque styles. The church of Sainte-Catherine, without a bell tower, has a three-vessel basilical nave and a polygonal choir. Its interior, redesigned in the 18th century, preserves medieval frescoes (Crucifixion, Mont des Oliviers) and a baroque master altar decorated with a painting by Jean-Benoît Reissmuller (1710). Conventual buildings, organized around a cloister, have a neo-classical facade with a coat of arms, vestige of its judicial function. Ranked a historic monument in 1921, the site remains partially inaccessible, the church being closed since the archaeological excavations interrupted in the 1980s.

Among the remarkable elements are the funeral chapel of the Manderscheid (1606), the funeral slabs of the displaced Teutonic Knights, and a 17th century sundial decorated with a cosmological fresco. The convent thus illustrates the religious, educational and judicial evolution of Rouffach, from medieval times to today.

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