Cistercian Abbey in Ołobok

In Ołobok on the Prosną river, 17 km east of Ostrów Wielkopolski, survives one of the oldest monastic monuments of Wielkopolska. The foundation of 1211 is credited to Duke Władysław Odonic, and two years later Archbishop Henryk Kietlicz of Gniezno consecrated the church and brought the first twelve sisters with their abbess from Trzebnica. Though the site is often called an abbey of Cistercian monks, it was Cistercian nuns who lived here.

The church with the abbess's throne

Today the former monastic church is represented by the parish church of St. John the Evangelist, raised on the site of the Gothic 14th-century church. It retains original Gothic elements — including the famous abbess's throne, a reminder that it was nuns who ruled here for centuries. The monastery's invocation was St. John the Evangelist and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The end of the community

The monastery's lands were confiscated in 1796 after the partitions, and the community was dissolved in 1837 — yet the sisters lived at the monastery until 1864, when the last of them died. At the end of the 19th century the monastery buildings were demolished; their brick was used, among other places, in a church in Chełmce near Kalisz. Only a fragment of the cloister wing survives today.

What to see

Three objects await on site: the post-Cistercian parish church, the cloister remnant and the wooden cemetery church of St. John the Baptist from the 16th century, raised through the sisters' efforts. Round off the visit with a walk along the Prosną — the village lies near the mouths of the Ołobok and Gniła Barycza streams.