Ołobok is a village located not far from the Ołobok brook’s estuary flowing into the Prosna River, ca. 7 km south of Kalisz, by the road leading to Grabów on the Prosna.
The convent was founded in 1213 by Władysław Odonic, Duke of Wielkopolska, and nuns arrived there from Trzebnica, Lower Silesia. The original church and nunnery buildings were built of timber. A brick church and its adjacent four-winged cloister with a garden patio were created in the late 15th/early 16th century, but then destroyed by a fire in the former half of 17th c. The buildings were only rebuilt in 1695-6, with an octagonal porch and a chapel annexed on the south. Less than a hundred years later, in 1780-8, the temple’s façade was rebuilt and a tower erected. 1837 saw the Prussian authorities liquidate the convent; its buildings were almost completely demolished by 1888. In 1922-4, the church underwent a thorough renovation; it has been serving as a parish church till this day.
The church of St. John the Evangelist is a single-nave structure whose presbytery is slightly narrower. Late-gothic as to the framework, the temple owes its present-day baroque character to seventeenth/eighteenth-century redevelopments. The nave and the presbytery are covered with barrel vaults with lunettes, the chapel having a sail vault. Uniform rococo interior furnishings, dating to late 18th century, have survived; the main altar is ornamented with sculptures of Cistercian saints. A richly embellished abbess’s lodge, featuring the coats-of-arms and initials of Abbess Brygida Gorzeńska, is a really characteristic feature. A marble grave slab of Abbess Zofia Łubieńska, died 1636, is an earlier-date monument.
What has remained of the former cloister building includes what was its southern wing, adjacent to the church on the north, and the section once housing a chapter and a small treasury, which was connected with the temple’s presbytery on the eastern side. A baroque stone figure of St. Laurent stands near the church.
Address:
ul. Kościelna 42
63-405 Ołobok