Melk Abbey: A Benedictine Baroque Monastery in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page24 sections
History
Melk Abbey is a Benedictine abbey in Austria, above the town of Melk on the rocky right bank of the Danube at the edge of the Wachau valley. The present complex is principally a Baroque work built between 1702 and 1736 and completed after a major fire by 1746. Dedicated to Saint Coloman, with its church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, the abbey remains part of the Austrian Benedictine Congregation and is under the Diocese of St. Pölten.
Babenberg centre and Benedictine foundation
From the beginning of the eleventh century, Melk was a power centre of the Babenbergs, the dynasty that ruled the medieval March and Duchy of Austria before the rise of the Habsburgs. The site served as a preferred burial place for the dynasty. On 13 October 1014, the relics of Saint Coloman were transferred to Melk, strengthening its religious and dynastic importance.
Manuscripts indicate that under Margrave Leopold I, Melk already possessed a priestly community. It functioned either as a collegiate institution or as an itinerant court centre where members of the ruling family, and sometimes senior churchmen, stayed. As Austrian territory expanded northward and eastward and other centres developed, Melk lost political importance, but it continued to serve as a Babenberg burial site.
During the Investiture Controversy, the medieval struggle between papal and secular authorities over the appointment of bishops and other church officials, Margrave Leopold II sheltered Altmann, Bishop of Passau. Altmann had been expelled in 1085 because of his loyalty to the pope. He probably influenced Leopold II’s decision to establish a monastery on the rock above the Danube.
In 1089, Benedictine monks from Lambach Abbey, led by Abbot Sigibold, moved into the newly built monastery. Benedictines follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, the guiding rule of their monastic order. In 1122, Melk received exemption from the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Passau, placing the abbey directly under the pope.
A charter dated 1113 and the text known as the Ernestinum sought to document possessions supposedly granted to the monastery by the Babenbergs. Both documents are now considered very probably forged. Melk nevertheless developed its own scriptorium, or manuscript-writing room, and an active school. The school is documented in manuscripts from 1160 and was described as founded before 1140. Heinrich of Melk, a cleric and satirical poet associated with the early Middle High German period, probably worked at the abbey. Manuscripts from the abbacy of Walther, who held office from 1224 to 1247, also survive, some decorated with coloured illuminations.
Fire, crisis, and the Melk Reform
On 14 August 1297, a major fire destroyed the monastery, church, outbuildings, library, and most of the manuscripts and historical records. Abbot Ulrich II, who led the abbey from 1306 to 1324, managed only a basic reconstruction. During the fourteenth century, plague, crop failures, and the Western Schism, a division within the papacy lasting from 1378 to 1417, weakened the monastery’s discipline and economic foundations.
Religious and dynastic associations continued to shape Melk during this difficult period. In 1362, Duke Rudolf IV donated the richly decorated Melk Cross as a reliquary, a container for a sacred relic, holding a purported fragment of the True Cross that Margrave Adalbert had brought to Melk around 1040. Rudolf also transformed Saint Coloman’s grave into a sumptuous high tomb.
By the early fifteenth century, the abbey was heavily indebted and divided by internal conflict. After the Council of Constance called for the reform of Benedictine monasteries, Nikolaus Seyringer was sent to supervise the process. A former rector of the University of Vienna and a monk of the Benedictine monastery at Subiaco, Seyringer became abbot of Melk in 1418.
Seyringer restored strict monastic discipline and established the movement later known as the Melk Reform. This fifteenth-century programme sought to renew strict observance, discipline, and learning in Benedictine monasteries. It spread through Austria and much of southern Germany, including the Black Forest. Monks travelled to Melk to study the reform, while members of its community became abbots elsewhere.
In cooperation with the University of Vienna, Melk became a centre of culture and scholarship. The abbey produced or supported figures including Petrus von Rosenheim, Johannes von Speyer, Martin von Senging, Wolfgang von Steyr, Johannes Schlitpacher, and Paul Leubmann of Melk. Its scriptorium copied theological, monastic, and scientific works, and approximately two-thirds of the surviving Melk manuscripts date from this period.
War, Reformation, and recovery
The Hussite wars, conflicts between Frederick III and the nobility, financial demands imposed by secular rulers, and the wars of Matthias Corvinus placed continuing pressure on Melk. In 1483, Abbot Augustin von Obernalb was forced to resign and was replaced by Wolfgang Schaffenrath, who was favoured by Frederick III.
Ottoman wars and the destruction of the abbey’s properties near Vienna weakened Melk further during the early sixteenth century. Lutheran ideas gained influence among nearby inhabitants and the owners of neighbouring castles. By 1566, the community had fallen to fewer than ten members and was close to dissolution.
Abbot Urban Perntaz, appointed in 1564 and serving until 1587, began the recovery. After overcoming accusations and conflicts with secular officials, he received formal confirmation from Rome, repaired the abbey’s finances, and attracted new entrants from southern Germany. His successors, Kaspar Hofmann and Reiner von Landau, continued the work by reducing debts, buying back mortgaged property, and repairing, rebuilding, and altering the church and monastery.
Melk became a regional centre of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic renewal that responded to the spread of Protestant reform movements. With the agreement of the Diocese of Passau, the abbey appointed monks to surrounding parish posts to oppose Lutheran ideas. Its school expanded on the model of a six-year Jesuit gymnasium. Pupils completed four years at Melk and two years at the Jesuit college in Vienna.
By the end of the seventeenth century, the monastery had established the financial basis for a comprehensive rebuilding in the Baroque style. Literary and scholarly activity also revived. Johannes Zeller, Philibert Utz, Philibert Hueber, and Anselm Schramb lived and worked at Melk, and Schramb wrote the Chronicle of Melk.
The Baroque rebuilding
On 18 November 1700, the thirty-year-old Berthold Dietmayr was elected abbot. He sought to increase Melk’s religious, intellectual, and political importance through a complete rebuilding. Jakob Prandtauer designed the project and directed construction until his death in 1726. His nephew Joseph Munggenast then continued the work.
Restoration of the sacristy and the church’s unstable high choir began in 1701, but the undertaking soon expanded into a new church and a new monastery complex. A comprehensive plan dating from 1711 survives. Antonio Beduzzi served as interior architect, Johann Pöckh directed the stucco work from 1716, Johann Michael Rottmayr painted ceiling frescoes, Paul Troger created the frescoes in the library and Marble Hall, and Christian David of Vienna carried out decorative gilding. The church and monastery were substantially complete by 1736.
A major fire in 1738 destroyed nearly all the roofs, both church towers, and several representative rooms. Berthold Dietmayr ordered reconstruction but died in 1739 before it was completed. His successors, Adrian Pliemel and Thomas Pauer, finished the work despite financial and political difficulties. The new abbey church was consecrated in 1746.
The eighteenth century also brought renewed scholarly and musical activity. The Benedictine brothers Bernhard and Hieronymus Pez contributed to Austrian historical research. Robert Kimmerling, a pupil of Joseph Haydn, Marian Paradeiser, and Maximilian Stadler were active as musicians. Johann Georg Albrechtsberger served as abbey organist before becoming choirmaster of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.
State control and nineteenth-century change
Under Emperor Joseph II, Josephinism, a programme of state-directed and Enlightenment-influenced reforms, brought the abbey under much closer government control. In 1783, theological teaching at Melk was abolished and clerics were required to train at the Vienna General Seminary. The abbey had to staff newly created parishes and pay for parish houses and schools, but its educational and pastoral responsibilities prevented its dissolution.
After Abbot Urban Hauer died in 1785, Joseph II prohibited the election of a successor and installed a state-appointed commendatory abbot. A commendatory abbot administered an abbey by appointment rather than through ordinary monastic election. These measures were revoked after Joseph II’s death in 1790, and Isidor Payrhuber, commendatory abbot since 1788, was elected regular abbot.
The new Diocese of St. Pölten exerted additional influence over Melk. At the bishop’s initiative, the monastic gymnasium was moved to St. Pölten in 1787 and returned to Melk in 1804.
On 14 December 1805, a fire in the fortified northern bastion killed approximately 200 to 300 Russian Imperial soldiers who had been captured at the Battle of Austerlitz and held there. They were buried in a communal grave between Melk and Winden. During the Napoleonic Wars, heavy taxation and continuing Josephinist financial obligations caused serious debt. The abbey overcame this debt after Napoleon’s rule under Abbot Marian Zwinger, who served from 1819 to 1837.
The 1848 Revolution ended the abbey’s manorial jurisdiction, although Melk received financial compensation. Part of that compensation funded major repairs to the monastery buildings, while another part was used to purchase an estate at Margitta in present-day Romania.
Under Abbot Alexander Karl, who served from 1875 to 1909, Melk regained substantial regional influence. The abbey established a kindergarten in Melk and donated land that later became a villa district. The adjacent Abt-Karl Street commemorates him. Early twentieth-century improvements brought modern sewerage and water-supply systems, electric lighting, and major building repairs.
Twentieth-century survival and continuing life
Inflation in 1919 severely reduced the abbey’s financial assets. Valuable cultural property was sold, including a Gutenberg Bible, which was sold to Yale University in 1926. After Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938, the monastic gymnasium was closed and much of the abbey was confiscated for use by a state secondary school. The abbey avoided complete closure and survived the Second World War and the subsequent Allied occupation with little structural damage, although its vineyards were plundered.
The facade was renovated in 1960. A fire in 1974 damaged decorated rooms and interiors, leading to restoration work from 1978 to 1995. Work connected with the abbey’s 900th anniversary included the entrance building and Prelates’ Courtyard. Structural repairs followed in the library, Saint Coloman Hall, and the northern part of the complex in 1990, and the north, east, and south sides, the Gatekeeper’s Courtyard, and both bastions were restored from 1991 to 1995.
The Carthusian monastery at Gaming, owned by Melk, was sold in 1983 because its restoration could not be financed alongside the work at Melk. An anniversary exhibition held from 1989 to 1990 attracted approximately 1.1 million visitors. Agriculture and forestry no longer covered the abbey’s operating and restoration costs, so tourism became an additional source of income. In 2021, the community consisted of 27 monks.
Melk Abbey forms part of the Wachau Cultural Landscape, which entered the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000. The monastic school, documented since the twelfth century, continues as the Stiftsgymnasium Melk. After the Second World War, declining boarding numbers led the former boarding institution to develop into a secondary school with advanced programmes in Greek, French, music, art, mathematics, and the natural sciences. A school exchange with St. John’s Preparatory School in Minnesota began in 1966. The school recorded 924 pupils in 2012, and a comprehensive renovation with a new sports hall was completed in 2008.
Melk’s literary reputation was reinforced by Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, whose narrator is Adso of Melk and whose fictional manuscript is associated with the abbey. Vea Kaiser’s novel Blasmusikpop is partly set in a Benedictine monastery whose description resembles Melk.
Remains
Melk’s surviving complex is a monumental Baroque ensemble covering approximately 17,500 square metres. Its south wing extends for more than 240 metres, while the principal axis measures about 320 metres. The buildings, courtyards, gardens, church, and older defensive elements form a large architectural composition above the Danube and at the edge of the Wachau valley.
Entrance, courtyards, and gardens
Eastern portal and Gatekeeper’s Courtyard
The eastern entrance is formed by a portal built in 1718 in the enclosure wall and flanked by two bastions. The southern bastion dates from 1650, while Prandtauer added the northern bastion to create a symmetrical pair. Statues of Saint Leopold III and Saint Coloman, installed in 1716, stand beside the gateway, and angels by Lorenzo Mattielli crown its pediment. The portal opens into the Gatekeeper’s Courtyard, where one of the two surviving Babenberg Towers, a remnant of the older fortifications, stands on the right.
East facade and Prelates’ Courtyard
The east facade has a palace-like appearance. Its balcony was traditionally used by abbots to greet guests. Statues of Saints Peter and Paul stand beside the entrance, while the pediment carries the motto Absit gloriari nisi in cruce and an enlarged representation of the Melk Cross.
Prelates’ Courtyard measures 84 by 42 metres and has a trapezoidal plan oriented toward the church dome. Its surrounding facades are arranged with restrained and harmonious articulation. Franz Sebastian Rosenstingl’s frescoes of the four cardinal virtues were replaced by works of Friedrich Schilcher in the mid-nineteenth century. Because those paintings could not be restored, Peter Bischof and Helmut Krumpel replaced them with modern works in 1988.
Park and pavilion
The Baroque monastery park was laid out in 1746 and 1747 for Abbot Thomas Pauer according to designs by Franz Sebastian Rosenstingl. It retains the main features of its original plan, including the Paradise Garden and a Baroque water reservoir bordered by lime trees approximately 250 years old. A separate garden-and-park area contains the abbey restaurant.
Franz Munggenast designed the Baroque garden pavilion, built in 1747 and 1748. Johann Baptist Wenzel Bergl decorated its rooms with frescoes of exotic subjects in 1763 and 1764. The pavilion is now used as a cafe and for concerts. The bright, two-storey Saint Benedict Hall contains a ceiling fresco of Saint Benedict. Franz Rosenstingl created its original decoration, which Friedrich Schilcher renewed in 1852.
Saint Coloman fountain
The courtyard fountain dedicated to Saint Coloman was made in 1687. It stood at Melk until 1722, when Abbot Berthold Dietmayr gave it to the town for its market square. The fountain was bought from the dissolved monastery of Waldhausen in the early nineteenth century and returned to Prelates’ Courtyard.
Imperial Wing and museum
Imperial Staircase and Gallery
The Imperial Staircase leads from Prelates’ Courtyard to the Imperial Wing, which was intended for the imperial family. White limestone columns, stucco decoration, and allegorical sculptures of Constantia and Fortitudo shape the stairway. Its ceiling fresco shows boys pointing toward the imperial double-headed eagle.
The Imperial Gallery extends for 196 metres along almost the entire south side of the building. It contains portraits and brief biographies of rulers from the Babenberg and Habsburg dynasties. Most of the older portraits were painted in 1759 by Franz Joseph Kremer, a painter associated with the school of Paul Troger.
Former imperial rooms and collections
Only two of the former imperial rooms retain their original stucco decoration. Their furniture was transferred to Lauenburg Castle. The rooms now house the abbey museum, whose themes include Saint Benedict and the Benedictine Order, the Babenbergs and Saint Coloman, the history of the abbey and church, Romanesque and Gothic art, Baroque life, the rebuilding under Berthold Dietmayr, Josephinism, the abbey’s economy and building history, and the Baroque complex.
The museum collections include a late twelfth-century Romanesque crucifix carved from limewood, formerly kept in Vienna’s Ruprechtskirche. They also include the 1502 Melk or Breu Altar by Jörg Breu the Elder, with eight panels painted on both sides, along with scenes of Christ’s life and Passion, liturgical vestments, abbatial croziers, and a reusable Josephinist coffin.
Marble Hall and western terrace
The Marble Hall adjoins the Imperial Wing and was designed as a reception and banqueting room for secular guests, especially the imperial court. An iron grille in the floor provided heating. Salzburg marble forms the door panels and thresholds, while scagliola, a technique using coloured plaster to imitate marble, covers the walls.
Above the doors, inscriptions from the Rule of Saint Benedict state that guests should be received as Christ and that all should be shown appropriate honour. Paul Troger’s ceiling fresco of 1731 depicts Pallas Athena in a chariot drawn by lions and Hercules killing Cerberus. The image was interpreted as an allegory of Habsburg rule, combining wise moderation with necessary force. Gaetano Fanti supplied the illusionistic architectural painting around the fresco.
A broad western terrace connects the Marble Hall and the library. It overlooks the river landscape to the west, the mountains to the northwest, and the town of Melk to the north. It also provides an elevated view of the church’s west facade and its two towers.
Library
The library occupies three storeys and contains two principal rooms with ceiling frescoes painted by Paul Troger in 1731 and 1732. The larger fresco presents an allegory of faith through the sealed book, the apocalyptic Lamb, the dove of the Holy Spirit, angels, and personifications of the four cardinal virtues. Gaetano Fanti created the surrounding architectural illusionism. Dark wood panelling with inlay work and gold-brown book bindings gives the interiors their distinctive appearance.
Concealed doors within the bookcases allow readers to leave the dark main room for brighter spaces. Two upper-level reading rooms, decorated with frescoes by Johann Bergl, are not open to the public.
The library holds approximately 1,800 manuscripts dating from the ninth century onward, including a tenth- or eleventh-century copy of Virgil. A fragment of a thirteenth-century copy of the Nibelungenlied was discovered in 1997. The collection also contains about 750 incunabula, books printed before 1501, and approximately 100,000 volumes, including two 1493 copies of Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle. The written holdings have been microfilmed.
Abbey church
Exterior and structure
The abbey church is a large hall church with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, chapel niches, galleries, and a 64-metre-high tambour dome. Its exterior sculpture includes Saints Peter and Paul, the Archangel Michael, a guardian angel, the resurrected Christ, and two angels.
The church towers were rebuilt after the 1738 fire by Joseph Munggenast, who modified Prandtauer’s original design. Their forms already display features of the Rococo. Five bells follow a Baroque triadic sequence, f0-b0-d1-f1-a1. The largest, the Vesperin, weighs 7,840 kilograms and is the largest bell in Lower Austria.
After the fire, Berthold Dietmayr commissioned new bells from the Viennese founder Andreas Klein, and their frames were installed in 1739. The largest bell sounds during the Eucharistic consecration at pontifical masses. All five bells sound before pontifical masses and at vespers before major Catholic feasts. The second rings at 3 p.m. on Fridays, the third marks the Angelus in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, bells three through five call worshippers to Sunday services, and the small choir bell summons the community to morning mass.
Interior decoration and high altar
The church interior is richly decorated with gold leaf, stucco, and marble in gold, ochre, orange, green, and grey. Antonio Beduzzi supplied major designs and ideas, which local artists carried out. Johann Michael Rottmayr painted the presbytery frescoes and the nave ceiling frescoes. The latter follow Beduzzi’s designs and represent the Via Triumphalis of Saint Benedict.
Rottmayr’s dome-lantern fresco, painted in 1716 and 1717, depicts the Heavenly Jerusalem with God the Father, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the apostles, the Virgin Mary, and saints associated with Melk. The gilded high altar represents the farewell of Saints Peter and Paul. A large golden crown signifies their martyrdom as a Christian victory, while Old Testament prophets surround them and God the Father appears above the scene beneath a cross.
Transept altars and side chapels
The two transept altars are symmetrically arranged. The Saint Coloman altar contains a sarcophagus with the saint’s relics, while the Saint Benedict altar contains a cenotaph, a memorial tomb that does not contain the remains of the person commemorated, and a sculptural group showing Benedict’s death among his fellow monks. The Saint Coloman sculpture presents him at prayer.
Beduzzi designed the nave side chapels, which contain scenes from the lives of their dedicatees. On the north side, from west to east, are chapels dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the Archangel Michael, and the Three Magi. On the south side are chapels dedicated to Saint Sebastian, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Leopold. Their altar paintings include works by Paul Troger and Rottmayr dating from 1723 to 1746.
The Saint Leopold altar contains a 1650 oil painting on tin by Georg Bachmann, presenting the history of the Melk monastery from Leopold I to Leopold III. The Michael and John the Baptist altars contain sarcophagi with relics attributed to Christian martyrs from the Roman catacombs.
Pulpit and organs
The gilded pulpit was made by Peter Widerin of St. Pölten after a design by Galli-Bibiena. Its sounding board carries a group representing the triumph of the Church over heresy. The sides of the wooden prayer benches are decorated with acanthus carving.
The original large organ, built by the Viennese maker Gottfried Sonnholz, was installed in 1731 and 1732. Only its case facade survives, because the instrument itself was removed during reconstruction in 1929. Gregor Hradetzky built a replacement organ in 1970 with slider-chest action, 3,553 pipes, 45 stops, three manuals, and a pedal keyboard. The instrument was overhauled in 2005 by the Berlin firm Alexander Schuke under Bernhard Althaus. The work included replacing an open flute stop with a Montre 8-foot stop, revoicing the pipework, and installing an electronic combination system. The abbey also contains instruments by Reil, Hradetzky, Riedl, and Ullmann.
School area and memorial
Saint Coloman Hall, in the school area, contains a ceiling fresco by Paul Troger depicting the history of Melk Abbey. It is used for concerts but is otherwise not publicly accessible.
A black-marble memorial commemorates the Russian prisoners who died in the 1805 fire. Emperor Alexander III ordered it in 1891 at the communal grave between Melk and Winden. It was restored in 1945 under the Soviet occupation authorities and later enclosed by a fence with an arched opening. The memorial stands beside the B1 federal road and is protected as a historical monument.
