Žiče Charterhouse: Visiting the Carthusian Monastery Ruins

Where the Žiče Charterhouse stands

The monastery sits in the valley of Saint John the Baptist, in the village of Stare Slemene, near the settlement of Žiče, in the municipality of Slovenske Konjice. Look for Stare Slemene rather than the town itself; the ruins lie away from Slovenske Konjice in their own valley.

The remains belong to what the project describes as the former upper monastery of the Žiče Charterhouse, standing at the end of the valley. The complex is presented as connected walls and paths rather than as a single museum hall.

The founding around 1160

The charterhouse was founded around 1160 by Otakar III of Styria and his son Otakar IV of Styria, and a founding charter from 1165 survives in the Styrian Provincial Archives in Graz, which also records the first prior, Beremund.

The site is a former Carthusian monastery of the order founded at the Grande Chartreuse; the siting fits the order's preference for solitude, with the house occupying its own valley.

Twelve fathers and twice as many lay brothers are said to have come from the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble, staying in Konjice from 1160 before moving into the valley buildings in 1164. A lay brother named Aynard, sent from the Grande Chartreuse, is credited with leading construction.

The church of St. John the Baptist and its paired staircases

The central architectural intervention at the church of St. John the Baptist recreates the church's original dimension as a coherent spatial dominant, with surviving walls that let you read its former width.

Two spiral staircases once led to the church's upper floors, and the intervention re-established their link with a new lookout point set in the gap between the original and secondary north wall. The project also reconstructed the demolished part of the northern wall.

New suspended spiral staircases were designed inside the existing vertical shafts of the former staircases to reach the top of the remains and the loft of the new roof. New circulation sitting inside old circulation marks this as a conservation project rather than a cleared ruin. For more churches in Slovenia, see our guide to churches in Slovenia.

The folding roof over the church ruins

The largest single move was covering the standing fabric of the church with a semi-movable folding roof, completed in 2022 after a project dated 2020 to 2022. Lowered, the roof lets events in the church run regardless of season and weather; raised, it restores contact with the open sky above the nave.

The architects describe the roof as a deliberately rough, high-tech machine built to preserve the non-technological effect of open sky above the main nave, and it also carries the memory of the roughly two centuries in which the church stood as a ruin.

The work followed conservation requirements, with the Municipality of Slovenske Konjice as client. For a contrast in how a Slovenian religious site is presented to visitors, see Brezje: Visiting Slovenia's National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians.

Reading the ruins in order

The construction and restoration work was organized so that the existing walls allow a chronological reading of the nine-hundred-year-old sacred space.

The intervention deliberately keeps the ruins legible as ruins, landing between a ruin and a reconstruction rather than rebuilding outright.

Getting there and the valley setting

Stare Slemene and Žiče are villages in the municipality of Slovenske Konjice, so aim for that municipality and then follow the valley of Saint John the Baptist toward the monastery.

The approach runs through a valley with a creek, green slopes and an entrance facade, with the monastic complex framed by the surrounding hills. The monastery sits at the end of the valley rather than on a main road.

If you are touring the region's monasteries rather than making a single errand, Žiče fits alongside other monastic stops. Stična Abbey and Olimje give you two differently organized monastic visits on a wider circuit.

How much time to allow and how to pair the day

The visit is built around the church shell, the paired staircases, the lookout and the walls.

The natural pairing in the Konjice area is a second monastic stop, and Pleterje Monastery offers a useful comparison. Keep the drive between them for daylight, since valley roads are the slow part of the day.

If your interest runs to church art rather than architecture, Ptujska Gora and its Virgin of Mercy relief offer a different register of Slovenian religious building.

Should the charterhouse be your Konjice stop?

Make the Žiče Charterhouse your Konjice-area stop if you want a monastic ruin you can read, with a 2022 roof that turns the church into a debate about shelter and sky. Skip it if you need a furnished museum interior; the visit here is walls, staircases and structure.

Plan a focused stop in the valley of Saint John the Baptist, and pair it with one other monastic site rather than three. Check the current visiting arrangements with the Municipality of Slovenske Konjice before setting out.