Altzella Monastery ParkThe heritage of the Cistercians
At the beginning of the European Reformation, the German princes who had converted to the Lutheran faith drove the monks out of their monasteries. There remained ruined monastery grounds, in which anyone interested in history could perceive only the echo of the monks and their activities.
Such was the case also in Altzella, after the Saxon sovereign Prince Henry the Pious had ordered the secularisation of the Cistercian monastery there. The grounds where the monks had lived and worked since 1175 fell into ruin, the bricks of the monastery were removed to be used elsewhere, while valuable books from the library, numbering almost a thousand, were given over to the University of Leipzig.
However, because Altzella was the cemetery for the noble Wettin family, the royal court in Dresden remained interested in the lands. Here, in 1787, Elector Augustus III erected a mausoleum in an early classical style, while his garden architect Johann Friedrich Huebler surrounded the white graves with a landscaped park in Romantic style.
The manmade landscape, so natural in its appearance, with its old pointed arches, seemingly fixed gables and broken arches quickly attracted famous names of German art such as Casper David Friedrich who found total inspiration here. Anybody who today wanders onto the soft splendor of the old monastery grounds is certain to find what at that time fascinated the Romantics.
Address
Staatliche Schlösser, Burgen und
Gärten Sachsen
Klosterpark Altzella
Zellaer Straße 19 | D-01683 Nossen
Phone +49 (0) 3 52 42 5 04-50
Fax +49 (0) 3 52 42 5 04-33
altzella@schloesserland-sachsen.de
www.kloster-altzella.de
Disabled access
Limited accessibility
