Walkenried Abbey

Walkenried Abbey, on the southern edge of the Harz mountains in Lower Saxony, Germany, was the third Cistercian monastery founded on German soil, established in 1127 by Adelheid of Lare with the backing of King Lothair III under its first abbot, Henry I. At its height in the thirteenth century the community numbered around one hundred monks and more than two hundred lay brothers, and a new basilica modeled on Morimond Abbey, begun in 1209, was consecrated by Bishop Siegfried II of Hildesheim in 1290. The abbey was plundered during the German Peasants' War at Easter 1525, turned Lutheran later in the sixteenth century, and was secularized after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, leaving it in ruins. Since 1977 the ruins have been managed by the Osterode district authorities, a museum opened on the site in 2006, and since 2010 the remains have formed part of the Upper Harz Water Regale UNESCO World Heritage Site.