Maulbronn Monastery

UNESCO World Heritage Site: Maulbronn Monastery Complex (1993); The Most Completely Preserved Medieval Cistercian Monastery North Of The Alps, Founded 1147, With Its Workshops, Mills And Water System Intact · Maulbronn, Baden-Wurttemberg

Maulbronn is the most completely preserved medieval Cistercian monastery north of the Alps, and the reason it was inscribed in 1993 is not the church. It is everything around the church: the mills, the forge, the cooperage, the farm buildings, the walls and gates, and above all the water system of ponds, drains and channels the monks dug to run the place. Most surviving monasteries are a beautiful shell with the working parts gone; here the working parts are the exhibit. Founded in 1147 and built over the next three centuries, it shows the moment Romanesque turns Gothic, particularly in the paradise porch and the fountain house with its three-tier basin. After the Reformation it became a Protestant seminary, and it is a school still - Hoelderlin and Hermann Hesse were both pupils, and Hesse wrote about hating it. Maulbronn is a small place in rural Baden-Wurttemberg, about half an hour from Karlsruhe or Stuttgart by road and awkward by train. An hour and a half on site is plenty.

Klosterhof 5, Maulbronn, between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, Maulbronn, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany

The monastery courtyard and the lanes between the outbuildings are open ground you can walk into freely; the ticketed part is the church, cloister, fountain house and refectories. Open daily in the main season from roughly March to October, and on a reduced winter timetable, typically Tuesday to Sunday with Mondays closed from November to February - confirm, because the state palaces administration changes this. Last admission is roughly half an hour before closing. The church is a working Protestant parish church and closes to visitors during Sunday services and for weddings, funerals and the summer concert series. Confirm current times and prices with the state palaces and gardens office before travelling.

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