The Church of St Jacob and the adjacent parish hall were built in baroque style between 1677 and 1680 based on Italian builder, Pietro Orsolini’s plans.
The friary was placed under the Jesuit’s supervision who established a boarding school in Kőszeg. Although the building was not completed until 1680, teaching had already begun three years earlier in 1677. In the first decades of the 18th century there were several fires destroying a large part of the town centre including the friary. The building was more or less repaired by the 1720s, and the school started to operate in 1726.
The friary was then put under the supervision of the Piarist order and, for about 150 years, between 1815 and 1950, the Benedictine order used the buildings and carried out the teaching. In the early 1900s the friary was extended, the construction works were conducted by Ede Miller, an entrepreneur from Szombathely. This period saw the building of the grandiose hallway with a staircase as part of an overall modernisation programme. The Benedictine order reacquired the building in 1990 which, following another extensive refurbishment project, it started to operate under the name ‘Benedict Hotel’ in 2020.
There is a plaque on the wall of the building listing the names of teachers and pupils who studied here and have since become famous. Out of the eight names on the list, we can mention field marshal András Hadik; Jesuit writer, poet and translator Ferenc Faludi; Chief Justice and senior advisor to the king Kristóf Nicky; poet József Rajnis; and Jakab Sigray, one of the martyrs of the Jacobite conspiracy – each a prominent figure in their own time.
Intermediate level teaching provided by the Catholic Church started in November 1677 with 180 pupils at this institution. According to the records, the protestant school, working in the 1660s, was closed as a result of the Counter Reformation movement. In the same place as the former school, Count György Széchenyi laid the foundation stone in June 1677 for the new school, the predecessor of the current institution. The Jesuits, in charge of the school, put a lot of effort into their missionary work to convert the “heretic” Kőszeg, one important corner stone was of which was the high-standard education equipping pupils with a broad general knowledge. This tradition was preserved by Piarist and then by the Benedictine order. The school is celebrated as the intellectual centre of the West Pannon region; its illustrious pupils included aesthetician Fidél Beély, local historian Kálmán Chernel and his son, the prominent ornithologist István Chernel, and Frigyes Schey who played a major role in boosting Hungary’s economy in his capacity as deputy chair of the Stock Exchange in Vienna.
Other outstanding figures studying at this institution include writer and journalist Jenő Rákosi who returned to teach a decade later to his alma mater; chemist Ferenc Szabadváry or the world-famous chemist Sándor Görög.
