Ebrach Abbey

Ebrach Abbey, in Ebrach in the Bavarian region of Oberfranken, Germany, was the oldest Cistercian house in Franconia, founded in 1127 on land given by the local noble Berno and settled by twelve monks from Morimond Abbey in Burgundy under its first abbot, Adam of Ebrach. Construction of the present church began in 1200 and was largely finished by 1285, and from the thirteenth century the abbey served as a heart-burial site for roughly thirty bishops of Würzburg. The monastery was dissolved during Bavarian secularization in 1803, and part of its buildings have housed a young offenders' institution since 1958, though the abbey church itself remains open to the public. Its church is considered a notable example of early Gothic Cistercian architecture, with substantial Neoclassical interior changes added in the eighteenth century.