Travel Guide Murbach

In May 728, the missionary bishop Saint Pirmin founded an abbey in the valley of Murbach, at the request of Count Eberhard, brother of the Duke of Alsace. This isolated place immediately appealed to the religious. Thus, for more than a thousand years, the Benedictine monks lived in the richest and most prestigious abbey in Alsace. If Murbach still remains today a "end of the world", the old abbey did not live in isolation. Large donations ensured that the monastery had an enormous amount of land in the Upper Rhine, from the foot of the Alps to the Mainz region. In the 12th century the present abbey church was built. It is an astonishing construction, surprising the visitor with its elevation and the originality of the sculpted decoration of the upper parts inspired by oriental models. Protected by the Habsburgs, Murbach became one of the bastions of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 16th century. After the ravages caused by the Thirty Years' War and the annexation by France in 1680, the abbey was rebuilt. In 1693 a chapel Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is built. The monks, seduced by the new architectural canons in force, planned to rebuild the abbey church in baroque style. The work, begun in 1738, led to the disappearance of the nave. A small village spreads out in the place of the old abbey whose name it bears. Aware of the value of this historical and architectural heritage, the commune and the parish have been committed for more than 150 years to maintaining the former abbey church, the chapel of Lorette, and to preserving the mountain environment