- MONDSEE, ST GILGEN and ST WOLFGANG PART 1 -

Attersee and Mondsee

LINKS to other pages in the Mondsee and Wolfgang site and to the Colin Day Travelling Days series:

Our early morning journey from Weyregg takes us along the western side of Attersee lake left and below).......

.... and to the small towm of Mondsee on the banks of the lake of the same name.

Mondsee lies in the Vöcklabruck district of Upper Austria and located on the shore of the lake Mondsee.

The region of the Mondseeland, in which Mondsee is located, was formerly part of Bavaria. In 748 Mondsee Abbey was founded by Odilo, Duke of Bavaria. It is believed that the first monks came from Monte Cassino in Italy. In 788, after the fall of Duke Tassilo III, Mondsee became an Imperial abbey and over the centuries acquired extensive property. In 831 King Louis the Pious gave the monastery to the estate of Regensburg Cathedral.

It was not until 1142 that it regained its independence, under Abbot Conrad II, otherwise known as the Blessed Conrad of Mondsee. Conrad, formerly a monk of Siegburg Abbey, had been abbot of Mondsee since 1127, and was extremely successful in defending and regaining the rights and possessions of the monastery, to the extent that in 1145 he was murdered by a group of nobles at Oberwang nearby.

He was venerated as a martyr and declared Blessed. Conrad was succeeded as abbot by Blessed Walter of Mondsee (died 17 May 1158), long remembered as a model by the community for his exemplary striving after virtue. He was buried in St. Peter's chapel in the abbey church.











The town has a number of shops and eating places but its main attraction for tourists is its church

The cathedral church which dominates the small village of Mondsee was once the heart of an important monastery. Founded in 748 A.D. on the ruins of a Roman settlement, it influenced the culture of the region for more than a thousand years. The oldest German translation of the Bible was written here - the Mondsee 'Matthew'.

The basic Gothic structure of the cathedral was "modernized" in the 17th century. The baroque sculptures and altars were made by the famous sculptor Meinrad Guggenbichler. The monastery was dissolved in 1792. The properties belonging to it were given later to Napoleon I.

The wedding scene in the Sound of Music was filmed here. Maria, led by Liesl, walked down the aisle to meet the Baron on front of the stairs of the main altar. The cathedral organ could be seen and heard during the wedding ceremony.

The organ (right) as seen and heard in 'The Sound of Music' (right).

It's time to leave the church and its many ornate altars and religious antiquities and join the coach to take us on to St Gilgen ............