Last month, we shared four posts of Nicola’s pictures of the abbey of St John in Val Müstair, in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. About nine miles away, but on the Italian side of the border, stands the abbey of Marienburg (Mary’s mountain). It was originally founded in 1096 by a local noble family called von Tarasp, in a town on the other side of the mountain, but then moved to its current location in the mid-12th century. (The monastic community was the one which originally populated St John in Müstair, and was then replaced there by a women’s community.) It has the interesting distinction of being the highest abbey in Europe, at about 4400 feet above sea level. The complex burned down completely in 1418, so very little is preserved of its earlier history; it was damaged by another fire in 1656, just a few years after it had been given a major Baroque renovation. The church is an interesting combination of white and exuberant color, a take on the Baroque typical of the German-speaking world.
