Also know as the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this magnificent building belongs to the early Baroque period. It was built by the Jesuite order between 1642 and 1646, with the construction financed by the count Gashpar Drashković and supervised by the Jesuit order member Juraj Matota.

The cathedral is a single nave building with six side chapels and two galleries. Its bell tower with corner pilasters was a novelty at the time and was completed in 1676.

While the exterior of the cathedral is elegant in its simplicity, the interior is lavish in the best of Baroque ways. The main altar, completed in 1737, is an outstanding piece of sacred art, a two-level retable that fills the entire space of the presbytery.

The central piece of the lower level is the paining of the Assumption of Virgin Mary, flanked by the statues of St. Peter and Paul, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Donatus and St. John of Nepomuk, placed between the retable’s pillars. The upper level is adorned with the painting of St. Joachim and Anne, with the statue of Virgin Mary on one side and the statue of Gabriel on the other, representing the even of the Annunciation. Crowning this majestic structure is the representation of the Holy Trinity. The side chapel altars of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier are the only ones that have been preserved. Built in 1742 and 1743 they were, architecturally and stylistically, designed to act as counterparts. A number of 17th century paintings decorating the rest of the side chapels have been preserved as well. The sacristy is adorned with particularly lovely examples of Baroque illusionistic ceiling painting, made by the painter Blazh Grueber in 1727.

A number of the original church furniture no longer exists or has been replaced, including the church organ and the pulpit. The cathedral went through a series of renovations, mostly following two fire indicents in the 1660s, one on 1776 and one in 1818. The final full-scale renovation started in 1982 and was completed in 1995, led by the Croatian Conservation Institute. In 1997 the church became the cathedral of the Varazhdin Diocese.

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№23 of 24 places in Varazdin
№2154 of 2178 places in Croatia
№4 of 4 Churches and cathedrals in Varazdin
№289 of 290 Churches and cathedrals in Croatia