Franciscan Monastery Gardens

Author's Comments

There is a hill in Brookland that I forget exists until I am standing on it, and then I cannot understand how I let the months pass without coming back. The Franciscan Monastery sits on that hill, and the grounds around it are one of the strangest quiet places in the city. Replicas of Holy Land shrines. Grottos tucked into the slope with statues inside them going green with age. A rose garden that peaks twice, once in late May and again in September, and which in both windows reaches a density of bloom I have not seen anywhere else in the District. Midday is the time here, which is unusual for me to recommend. The grottos need the sun to be high enough to reach inside them, and the roses read best when the light is direct and the color is fully saturated. This is not a golden hour place. It is a midday place, which makes it useful on the trips where morning was given to something else. What I love about the monastery is how little it performs. There are almost no other photographers. The grounds are free, the tours are a few dollars, and on most weekday visits I have had entire sections of the garden to myself. The catacombs chapel below the main church is its own separate atmosphere and worth the tour fee for the descent alone. Come with a close-focus lens. The pictures this place gives up are small ones - a hand of a statue, a rose against old stone, a doorway into something dim. They add up into something I keep returning to.

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