Millstatt Abbey

Millstatt Abbey was founded around 1070 by Benedictines and the Romanesque fabric survives well - a cloister with carved capitals, and a west portal whose jambs and tympanum carry interlaced beasts, human figures and foliage of a kind that repays looking at closely. The name is traditionally explained by a legend that the founder, Domitian, threw a thousand pagan idols - mille statuae - into the lake, which is folk etymology rather than history. The abbey passed to the Knights of St George, a military order founded to fight the Ottomans, in 1469, and then to the Jesuits, before dissolution under Joseph II. The buildings now hold a museum, a music festival uses the church for its acoustics, and the lakeside setting is the reason most visitors come.

History

Count Aribo II, of the Aribonid family, and his brother Poto founded the monastery on their estates in the young Duchy of Carinthia, most likely before 1077, since a later chronicle records a tithe agreement of about 1070 with Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg; it certainly existed by 1122, when Pope Callixtus II named it, and its first known abbot, Otto I, came from Admont. The abbey prospered under papal protection, confirmed again in 1177, with a nunnery and a busy scriptorium, and it passed to the Order of Saint George in 1469 and to the Jesuits in 1598, until its dissolution in 1773 (Wikipedia, Millstatt Abbey).

What you'll find

• A Romanesque cloister - carved capitals from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
• The west portal - interlaced beasts, figures and foliage on the jambs and tympanum.
• Layers of ownership - Benedictines, the Knights of St George, Jesuits, dissolution.
• A music festival church - the building used for concerts each summer.

When to go

May to September; festival concerts in summer. Half a day.

Practical notes

The museum has seasonal hours and is modest. Concert dates restrict access to the church. Millstatt fills with lake visitors in high summer and parking is difficult.

Nearby

The Millstätter See is at the door; Spittal and the Drau valley are west.

Key facts