Bickentor and Bicken Monastery, Villingen

one of the many entrance gates of Villingen

Here gate and monastery are built together.

The Bickentor in Villingen was built around the year 1260 and is now 18 meters high. The floor plan of the medieval gate is 8 by 11 meters. The St. Ursula monastery chapel is attached. The monastery has been home to an order of the Poor Clares since 1480. In 1782 it became the Ursuline convent with a girls' school. To this day it is a grammar school and a secondary school. The monastery continued until the summer of 2015, when it closed its doors.
The name Bickentor (at the foot of the Bickeberg) goes back to the time before the city was founded when Alemanni were already settling on the other side of the Brigach. One of them named "Bicko" had his farm on the Bickeberg.