Ettal Abbey

Ettal Abbey is a Benedictine monastery founded in the 14th century, whose magnificent baroque basilica with its mighty dome is visible from afar in the Ammer valley. To this day the monks produce the well-known Ettal monastery liqueur and beer. The abbey lies near Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace.

Highlights

• Baroque basilica with a mighty dome
• Benedictine abbey since the 14th century
• Ettal monastery liqueur and beer
• Close to Oberammergau and Linderhof

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Background & History

Ettal Abbey was founded in 1330 by Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian, and the legend revolves around a marble image of the Madonna that the emperor is said to have brought back from a journey to Italy and that is still venerated to this day as a miraculous image above the high altar. The original complex was a Gothic central-plan building, a twelve-sided rotunda whose unusual form still resonates in the later baroque building and recalls the plans of earlier master builders that awaited completion.

In the 18th century the abbey was transformed into a total work of art of the Bavarian Rococo: a dome visible from afar crowns the building, the interior shines in bright stucco and colourful frescoes that Johann Jakob Zeiller executed around the middle of the century, while the artful stucco decoration is regarded as one of the great achievements of its time. Embedded in a quiet alpine valley between Oberammergau and Garmisch, the Benedictine monastery lives on to this day with a school and grammar school, and beyond its spiritual significance it is famous for its own brewery and the liqueur distillery, in which the monks have cultivated the monastic tradition of self-sufficiency for centuries and produce the well-known monastery liqueur according to a secret recipe. To this day Ettal has remained a much-visited pilgrimage site and a living centre of spiritual life in the Werdenfelser Land.