Rein Abbey

Rein was founded in 1129 by Margrave Leopold I of Styria, and because the older French mother houses - Cîteaux, La Ferté and Pontigny - were all suppressed at the Revolution, it is the oldest surviving house of the order anywhere, a claim it advertises as the cradle of Styria. The distinction matters and is worth stating precisely: Rein itself was dissolved by Joseph II in 1786 and not restored until 1929, so it is the oldest Cistercian abbey still in existence but not the longest continuously inhabited - that is Heiligenkreuz, founded four years later and never interrupted. The medieval church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century by Johann Georg Stengg into a baroque interior with frescoes and stucco, though the Romanesque outline is still legible in the plan. The library holds around a hundred thousand volumes and a significant manuscript collection. The abbey runs a grammar school and a working forest estate. Nearby Strassengel has a fourteenth-century Gothic pilgrimage church with an openwork spire, usually visited on the same trip.

What you actually see

• The oldest surviving Cistercian house - founded 1129, dissolved 1786, restored 1929.
• A baroque rebuilding - Stengg's eighteenth-century interior over a Romanesque plan.
• A hundred thousand volume library - with a significant manuscript holding.
• Strassengel nearby - the Gothic pilgrimage church with its openwork spire.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Access to most of the abbey is by guided tour at set times, in German. It is a working monastery and school with closed areas. Winter opening is minimal.

Nearby

Strassengel church is close; Graz is a short drive south-east.