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This convent, founded in 1600, housed about sixty nuns from the "very best" families of the island. They devoted themselves to educating young upper-class girls while leading a strict cloistered life.

The Poor Clare Sisters’ convent, founded in 1600, housed about 60 nuns. The Poor Clare Sisters of Bastia belonged to the best families of the island and were dedicated to the education of the girls from the select society. Although the rule of their order did not compel them to complete enclosure, they strictly submitted to it. On the first step of the entrance stairway, they had engraved Dante’s line : "lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate", (give up all hope, you who come in), meaning that once she had gone into the convent, the young novice would never go out from it. Once a year, on the day of Saint Clare, the governor of Corsica was received in the convent. He attended the Offices and a dinner prepared by the nuns in his honour. He and the chaplain were the only men who could speak to them. Secularized under the Revolution, the convent was used by the Military Engineers. In 1818, the building was turned into a prison and the prisons which were formerly in the underground of the governor’s palace were transferred there. The windows were partly bricked up. The chapel of the convent, formerly dedicated to Saint Clare of Assisi, was stripped of its decorations and its works of art, divided by a wall and turned into a dungeon. The prison was used in those premises until 1993, when it was moved into new buildings, on the municipality of Borgo. During the Revolution, the seminary became property of the State under the act of 10 July 1791. It was assigned to the army and used as a store. Then the families of the non-commissioned officers were housed there, and then the troop lodged there, in "the barracks of the seminary". In 1832, the south-western part of the building was demolished and rebuilt in order to put all the floors on the same level. A number of workshops - armoury, shoe-room, dressmaking shop- and a forge were installed there.

Bastia

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