Top 10 Monasteries in Austria
Few countries wear their monastic heritage as visibly as Austria. The German word Stift — an endowed religious foundation — still names dozens of houses scattered across the country, most of them Benedictine, Augustinian or Cistercian, and many founded by the Babenberg margraves who ruled these lands before the Habsburgs. What makes the Austrian abbeys distinct is what happened to them in the 17th and 18th centuries: flush with Counter-Reformation confidence and imperial patronage, wealthy communities tore down their medieval cores and rebuilt on a colossal Baroque scale, hiring architects such as Jakob Prandtauer and Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt and painters such as Paul Troger. The result is a string of golden, fresco-vaulted palaces of prayer, several of them perched dramatically above the Danube. Many survived Emperor Joseph II's monastic dissolutions of the 1780s precisely because they ran schools and parishes, and a good number remain active communities today. These ten are the essential ones.
1. Melk Abbey, Lower Austria
The great yellow abbey of Melk crowns a rocky bluff at the western gate of the Wachau valley, and it is the image most people carry of Austrian monasticism. Benedictines have lived here since 1089, when Margrave Leopold II handed over a former castle, but the present church and monastery were rebuilt by Jakob Prandtauer between 1702 and 1736 in an exuberant Baroque that seems to grow out of the cliff itself. The library, with its ceiling fresco and thousands of medieval manuscripts, is one of the most famous monastic rooms in the world — Umberto Eco borrowed the name of his narrator, Adso of Melk, from it. The abbey church glows with gilding and frescoes by Johann Michael Rottmayr.
2. Göttweig Abbey, Lower Austria
A little downstream, on a hill on the south bank opposite Krems, Göttweig rises so prominently that it has long been nicknamed "the Austrian Montecassino." Founded in 1083 by Bishop Altmann of Passau, it passed to the Benedictines a decade later and has kept the Rule ever since. After a devastating fire in 1718, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt drew up plans for a vast new complex; only part was built, but what stands includes the celebrated Imperial Staircase, crowned by a sweeping ceiling fresco by Paul Troger. The terraced views over the Danube and the surrounding Wachau — a UNESCO World Heritage landscape — are reason enough to climb up.
3. Klosterneuburg Abbey, Lower Austria
Just north of Vienna stands the oldest working monastery in Austria, an Augustinian house founded in 1114 by Margrave Leopold III, the country's patron saint, who is buried within it. Its greatest treasure is the Verdun Altar, an extraordinary set of gilded enamel panels completed by Nicholas of Verdun in 1181 and ranked among the masterpieces of medieval European art. Klosterneuburg also runs what is generally considered Austria's oldest winery, cultivating vines on the slopes around the abbey since its foundation. Emperor Charles VI later dreamed of turning it into an Austrian Escorial, and though only a fraction of that grandiose scheme was finished, the domes he commissioned still crown the skyline.
4. Admont Abbey, Styria
Deep in the Enns valley, ringed by the peaks of the Gesäuse, the Benedictine abbey of Admont was founded in 1074 and holds a singular record: its library is the largest monastic library in the world. Completed in 1776 to designs by Joseph Hueber, the hall runs some seventy metres beneath seven ceiling frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte and gleams in white and gold, holding around 200,000 volumes. When a catastrophic fire swept the abbey in 1865, the library was one of the few parts to survive, and its books with it. The rebuilt monastery today combines its historic collections with a surprising museum of contemporary art.
5. Heiligenkreuz Abbey, Lower Austria
Tucked into the wooded folds of the Vienna Woods, Heiligenkreuz has been home to Cistercian monks without interruption since its founding in 1133 by Margrave Leopold III — one of the oldest continuously active Cistercian communities anywhere. Its name, "Holy Cross," comes from a relic of the True Cross given to the house in the 12th century, and the Romanesque and early Gothic church still frames the monks' daily round of chant. That chant reached an unexpected global audience in 2008, when a recording of the community's Gregorian singing became an international bestseller. The abbey also runs a respected theological college and remains a genuine, busy monastery rather than a museum.
6. Kremsmünster Abbey, Upper Austria
Kremsmünster is among the oldest houses on this list, founded in 777 by Tassilo III, Duke of Bavaria, according to tradition after his son died in a hunting accident nearby. It preserves the Tassilo Chalice, an intricately worked copper and gilt vessel from the eighth century and one of the most important survivals of early medieval metalwork. The abbey's most curious feature, though, is the Mathematical Tower, a seven-storey observatory built in the mid-18th century to house the community's scientific collections — an early scientific "skyscraper" that reflects the Benedictine appetite for learning. The Baroque courtyards and the famous arcaded fish ponds complete a remarkable ensemble.
7. Sankt Florian Abbey, Upper Austria
Rising above the plain southeast of Linz, the Augustinian abbey of Sankt Florian is built over the grave of the Roman-era martyr whose name it bears. Rebuilt in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by Carlo Antonio Carlone and Jakob Prandtauer, it is a Baroque showpiece of marble halls and a grand staircase. For music lovers it is a place of pilgrimage: the composer Anton Bruckner sang here as a boy, later served as organist, and asked to be buried beneath the great organ that now bears his name. Sitting in the church while that instrument sounds, directly above his tomb, is one of the more moving experiences in Austrian sacred music.
8. Zwettl Abbey, Lower Austria
In the forested hills of the Waldviertel, on a bend of the Kamp river, the Cistercian abbey of Zwettl was founded in 1138 by the local Kuenring lords. It is prized for its architecture across the centuries: a soaring Gothic choir consecrated in the 14th century, wrapped later in a graceful Baroque tower, and a cloister that ranks among the finest medieval monastic spaces in the country. The community, still active, keeps a valuable library and archive, and its setting — quiet, green and off the main tourist routes — preserves something of the contemplative remoteness the Cistercians originally sought.
9. Lilienfeld Abbey, Lower Austria
South of Sankt Pölten, in the valley of the Traisen, Lilienfeld is the largest medieval abbey in Austria by extent — a vast Cistercian complex founded in 1202 by Duke Leopold VI, "the Glorious," who lies buried in its church. The building sits at the meeting point of Romanesque solidity and early Gothic lightness, its long nave and cloister giving a strong sense of the order's austere ideals before the Baroque age softened so many of its neighbours. Less visited than the Danube giants, it rewards those who make the trip with scale and atmosphere rather than gilding.
10. Nonnberg Abbey, Salzburg
High on the Nonnberg hill above Salzburg's old town sits the oldest continuously existing nunnery in the German-speaking world, a Benedictine convent traditionally founded around 714 by Saint Rupert of Salzburg, with his kinswoman Erentrudis as first abbess. Behind its Gothic church and enclosed walls the sisters have kept the Rule for some thirteen centuries. To many visitors, though, Nonnberg is better known from film: this is the convent where Maria was a novice in The Sound of Music, and its gate appears in the story. Active, enclosed and quietly dignified, it is a fitting place to end a tour of Austria's abbeys.
Between them these houses trace the whole arc of Austrian monasticism, from an eighth-century convent above Salzburg to the Baroque theatre of the Wachau, and you can plot every one of them, plan a route along the Danube, and find their neighbours on the interactive map.