Neuberg Abbey

Neuberg Abbey stands in the Mürz valley in Styria, Austria. It was founded in 1327 by Duke Otto the Merry of Habsburg as a filial monastery of Heiligenkreuz. The abbey church took over a century to complete, delayed by a mid-14th-century plague epidemic. In 1397 the Treaty of Neuberg was signed within its walls. After suppression in 1786, the buildings became a hunting lodge for Emperor Franz Joseph I in the 19th century. Today the site houses two museums, fifty hotel rooms and several offices. The abbey’s architecture follows the plan of Heiligenkreuz, its mother house. The cloisters and chapter house contain important 14th-century sculptural reliefs. The sandstone church, begun around 1330, was finished in 1496 and has the largest surviving medieval roof-timber construction in the German-speaking world. Inside, a Baroque high altar from 1612 dominates the nine-bayed interior, which also holds ten further altars. The church now serves as Neuberg’s parish church dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. Visitors walk through the medieval cloisters and chapter house to view the reliefs. The vast church interior shows the contrast between Gothic structure and Baroque decoration. The roof’s massive larch timbers span more than eleven hundred cubic metres. Outside, the abbey’s setting in the Mürz valley offers quiet walks among the surrounding hills.