Veszprém Valley Convent

The building complex of the convent in its first period consisted of a small church with a straight apse to the east of a trapezoidal courtyard, a tower that was as wide as the church nave connected to the west side of this, and a long, presumably two-story building wing south of all these. There were some service buildings to the north of this L-shaped complex. The residential building had a kitchen and/or a heated room on the southern end of its ground floor. Due to the sloping terrain, the side walls of certain buildings acted as buttresses in some cases and the ground levels of the monastery rose in a number of steps in a northerly direction. Therefore, it was necessary to go up a few stairs to get from the courtyard level to the church interior, and the floor levels of the northern building wings were significantly higher. In the Cistercian period that followed, the northern service buildings were remodeled around the middle of the 13th century and new buildings constructed on stone foundations and presumably with stone walls were erected. The precise ground plans of these have not yet been determined by the excavations to this point. Subsequently, a side chapel with a small crypt under the apse was built on the northern side of the church in the very early 14th century. At the same time, a large building section was erected between the tower and the northern service buildings, connecting them. In the fourth period, at the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century, the recently built northern side-chapel was demolished and a large Gothic church with an apse terminating in five sides of an octagon was built on the northern side of the church from the first period. Due to this, the earlier, smaller church became a side-chapel of the new building. At the same time, the convent wing was further extended, presumably by the aforementioned heated, two-story building. Due to a lack of excavations, there is no accurate information about the buildings of this era located on the western side of the site. Finally, in the 15th century, building wings were constructed enclosing the trapezoidal courtyard on the western and the southern sides, in part by demolishing the earlier buildings. The courtyard that was formed in this way was encircled by a passageway to the east and the north, behind which stood the older building sections, while the buildings to the west and south opened directly onto the courtyard. The courtyard was enclosed by heated rooms, a kitchen, and a large cellar to the east, and a series of service buildings partially cut into the hillside at a slightly higher level than the passageway on the northern side. A heated room with a lime mortar floor opened onto the courtyard on the western side. There is no information about the southern wing and the southern end of the western wing because their remains are covered by an undisturbed layer of debris. The church protruded out from the complex to the east, and it was surrounded by a large cemetery to the north and a smaller cemetery to the south. The southern side was terraced down towards the Séd River. Read less