Churches
There used to be several church orders in Varaždin, such as the Capuchins, the Ursulines, the Jesuits and the Franciscans. Churches were built in medieval Varaždin, but most of them don`t exist anymore. Stone fragments which have been found in the Parish Church of St Nicholas date back to the Romanesque period. The Parish Church was the main sacral building in the Middle Ages and it is situated in the main town square. In the 15th century the Church was rebuilt and it took on a Gothic form. From that period a bell tower is preserved.
During the time of the Baroque, when church orders started coming to Varaždin, the town experienced a period of a rapid construction growth. The Jesuit Church was built first (1642-1646) as a typical early Baroque hall church with “Wandtpfeiler”- interior chapels separated by walls. In 1650, the Franciscan Church of St John the Baptist was built by Peter Rabbe from Graz. Both Churches are richly decorated with wall paintings and stucco. “Master Stephan” from Graz was a construction manager of a new Franciscan monastery, while Jacob Schmerleib from Leibnitz erected a Jesuit Monastery (1679-1691). In the 17th century, builders from Styria mostly worked in Varaždin.
The most significant achievements of the Baroque architecture took place in the 18th century thanks to Croatian masters of a foreign origin. At the beginning of the century, a Capuchin monastery with a church was built. It had a simple architectural form and it was very similar to Capuchin monasteries in other parts of Croatia. Thanks to the financial help provided by empress Maria Theresa an Ursuline Monastery with a maiden dormitory was built from 1715 to 1749. Next to it there is an Ursuline Church (1722-1729), which is one of the earliest Baroque churches in Croatia with a typical gable bell tower on the façade. The new Parish Church of St Nicolas, which was built in the middle of the 18th century, was designed by a local builder Šimun Ignac Wagner.
A lot of sacral buildings were destroyed during a great fire that took place in 1776. In the following years they were rebuilt to a greater extent. The Churches of St Florian (1777) and St Vitus (1778-1782) were rebuilt by a local builder Ivan Adam Poch and he is responsible for the fact that today`s church has a late Baroque form. When the Jesuit order had been abolished in 1773, their church was inherited by the Pavlins who built a new representative façade with a volute gable. The building of Baroque churches and monasteries significantly contributed to the creation of an urban picture of Varaždin, which has remained as such to this day.
The building of churches in the Historicist style started in the 19th century and among them the Church of St Georg stands out. The Church was built in 1884.
