Zirc Abbey

Cistercians settled at Zirc in 1182, left a ruined and abandoned house by 1538 after neighbouring landlords seized and looted its estates, came back from 1660, and in the eighteenth century built the Baroque abbey and church that stand today in the middle of the Bakony hills. The building people come for is the library: the Reguly Antal hall, fitted in the 1850s with shelving, galleries and reading furniture carved from oak by a local craftsman over years, holding tens of thousands of volumes in a room where the woodwork is the exhibit. The abbey also runs a natural history museum of the Bakony and keeps an arboretum behind the buildings, laid out from the eighteenth century, with mature exotic trees and a stream.

History

The abbey was most probably founded by King Béla III in 1182 on royal land. It fell into crisis in the 15th century; by 1511 it was in ruins with a handful of monks, in the 1530s neighbouring landlords seized its estates and looted it, and by 1538 it was abandoned. In 1659 it was given to the abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Lilienfeld, who revived it the next year; the community was expelled in 1810 but restored in 1814 under Abbot Antal Dréta, after which the abbey prospered, joined by the abbeys of Pilis, Pásztó and, in 1878, Szentgotthárd (Wikipedia, Zirc Abbey).

The main sights

• The carved oak library hall - shelving and galleries cut by hand in the 1850s.
• The Baroque abbey church - the eighteenth-century rebuilding.
• The Bakony natural history museum - the region collected and displayed.
• The arboretum - mature exotics behind the abbey.

When to go

April to October for the arboretum; the library and museum are open year round with reduced winter hours. Half a day. The library is entered on timed visits.

Things to know

The library is a single room and photography inside is restricted. Guiding is mostly in Hungarian. Zirc has few restaurants and little open in the evening. Trains from Veszprem are infrequent.

Nearby

Csesznek castle is north-west; Veszprem lies south.

Key facts