The Parochial Palace

There's a building by the Church of Holy Trinity that used to be a Franciscan cloister. The building of the cloister began in 1743 and was completed in 1749. This is where Sombor was proclaimed a Free and Royal City by the Charter of Maria Theresia on 24th April 1749. The Franciscans left both the Cloister and Sombor obeying an order issued by Austrian Emperor Joseph II in 1786. That same year, Sombor became the permanent seat of Bačka-Bodrog District, so the parochial office and administration was moved to the Cloister building and had stayed in it until 1809, when a new Municipal Assembly Building – Županija was built.

On the south facade of the Parochial Palace (Plebanija) there’s a sundial. It was placed in 1852 on the initiative of Jovan Čokor, the headmaster of the Teacher-Training School. He used to punish his students really hard, resulting in the students’ mutiny and his leaving Sombor.

There’s also a sarcastic inscription as part of the sundial, ‘one of these is your last’, written in Serbian and Hungarian.