Hokkaido Official Tourism Site HOKKAIDO LOVE!

Japan's first convent for women, founded in Meiji 31, where you can tour the chapel and front garden featuring a mix of Gothic and Romanesque styles.

Trappistine Convent, founded in 1898, has carved its history as Japan's first convent for women. The current chapel, rebuilt in 1927, is impressive with its brick exterior walls and semicircular arched windows, showing unique architectural beauty mixing Gothic and Romanesque styles. While the interior is a women-only convent prohibited to men, you can stroll in the publicly accessible front garden in a serene atmosphere. Walking the cobblestone paths, you can touch upon a part of the space where nuns quietly live with prayer, labor, and reading as their daily routine, and sacred time different from everyday life flows.

In the reference room attached to the shop, you can learn about the long history this place has walked through displays introducing the convent's history and the nuns' lives. At the shop, you can purchase Madeleine cakes and cookies handmade by the nuns. The time selecting special items only available here, amid the gentle fragrance of baked goods drifting, remains in your heart along with memories of the visit. At this historic convent nestled on Hakodate's hills, you can experience a space of silence and prayer.