About Eberbach Abbey

A monastic house already existed at Eberbach from 1116, first occupied by Augustinian canons and transferred to Benedictine monks in 1131, before Bernard of Clairvaux founded the Cistercian abbey there in 1136 — the first Cistercian monastery on the eastern bank of the Rhine. Construction progressed through the 12th and 13th centuries, producing a three-aisled Romanesque basilica with transept alongside an increasingly extensive complex of monastic buildings; at its height in the 12th and 13th centuries, the community numbered around 100 monks and more than 200 lay brothers. The monks planted their first vineyards at Eberbach in 1136, the very year of the abbey’s founding, and by the Middle Ages had expanded their holdings to some 300 hectares, then the largest single vineyard estate in Europe, making the abbey one of the wealthiest and most economically significant monasteries in Germany. The abbey’s dedicated “Cabinetkeller,” a cellar reserved for its finest wines, gave rise to the German wine-quality term “Kabinett,” still in official use today. Count Johann IV of Katzenelnbogen introduced Riesling vines to the surrounding Rheingau region while the monks themselves still cultivated red varieties such as Grobrot. The abbey was dissolved on 18 September 1803 following the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the sweeping German territorial reorganisation of the era; it later passed into Prussian ownership in 1866, served as an asylum until 1873, and functioned as a prison until 1912. Its exceptionally well-preserved medieval architecture brought it to wider public attention in the winter of 1985-1986, when interior scenes of the film adaptation of Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” were shot there; since 1988 the abbey has also served as the principal venue of the Rheingau Musik Festival.