The owner of Tarnów, Jan Amor Tarnowski, brought the Bernardines to the city and in 1459 founded a wooden monastery. In the 15th century, in its place, he built a brick monastery complex surrounded by a wall, consisting of the Gothic church of Our Lady of the Snow, three monastery wings with a patio and farm buildings.

In 1789, the Austrian authorities liquidated the monastery, and the monks moved to the abandoned Bernardine monastery after the dissolution of their convent in 1781. The former Bernardine monastery complex, after thorough reconstruction, was designated for secular purposes.

The Baroque church, formerly owned by the Bernardine Sisters, was built in the years 1747–1776 by the Sanguszko family outside the town walls on the slope above the monastery, in the place of a wooden church from the 17th century. Until 1827 it was the church of St. Barbara. It is a Baroque, one-nave, two-span church with a narrower chancel, chapel and sacristy embedded in the monastery building. The gable roof is crowned with an octagonal turret with a spire. The interior has a barrel vault with lunettes. The furnishings are Baroque and neo-Baroque from the 19th century. The church and monastery, after fires in 1809 and 1815, were renovated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, it is the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in which there is a miraculous image of the Merciful Jesus and Our Lady of Sorrows from the 16th century.