St Peter's Archabbey

Why go

This record is the Benedictine archabbey, a living monastery, with its abbey church, cemetery and catacombs; its restaurant and its museum are not separate records. The archabbey's site (in German) says Bishop Rupert of Worms founded it in 696 as a mission monastery and that monks have lived, prayed and worked there since then. It says the St Peter's cemetery is older than the abbey itself, and that the so-called catacombs on its edge are rock caves cut into the Mönchsberg, reached through the Communegruft, which served as hermitages and burial places and have been wrongly called catacombs since the 17th century. The site says free tours of the catacombs, the abbey church and parts of the cloister are offered to groups and school classes on request, booked through the church rector, and that tours for individual visitors are not possible.