Another sunny and extremely hot day, and another amazing place to see. Mercifully the excursion to Melk Abbey departed at 9am, so before the heat had built up to overpowering. This was part of the summer heatwave of 2022 which went right across Europe and, as previously mentioned, was also part of the drought which caused the issue with river levels.
However, we couldn’t let it stop us getting out and about, so hats on and bottles of water grabbed, off we went. Melk Abbey is a Benedictine abbey in a Jakob Prandtauer designed Baroque building constructed during the 1700s on a hilltop location overlooking the town. It was originally built as a palace, which would explain its opulence, and the monks then turned it into a fortified abbey – you can see towers attached which don’t match the rest of the architecture although its not clear whether they were there earlier or later additions. The monastic community itself dates back 900 years. We were told the palace building has 365 windows (no we didn’t count), one for each day of the year, and some stunning views (yes we did take those in).
We were split into a number of smaller groups with separate guides for this tour – and it was another place where photographs were not allowed inside. After about three quarters of an hour dodging round rather a lot of only passingly interesting exhibits in their stifling museum area, we snuck off like naughty teenagers and went ahead of our group, and the others caught there, to explore alone!
It is a stunning building and we had 3 great moments as a result of our escape. The first was being in the library with virtually nobody else there so it was quiet and we could just wander around. We could admire the Paul Troger frescoed ceiling of the library which consists of a central figure surrounded by angels representing the four Cardinal Virtues – Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance.
I also want to mention that in the library there were 2 globes, one each side. One was the usual globe of the world, albeit very old with all the misshapen continents found on these early renditions. The other was a celestial globe, with constellations and planets shown on it. You cannot touch them so only get to see part of each, but as someone who loves maps (ask B about that!) and – as many of us are – I am also fascinated by the night sky (although rubbish at recognising anything beyond The Plough and Orion).
The library was huge, and our Viking Daily mentioned that there are 80,000 mediaeval manuscripts kept here, and a total of 100,000 volumes across the main hall we saw and in 12 more rooms that the public is not allowed to see.
Our second “moment” occurred in the church, which we reached via beautiful spiral staircase which leads from the library. We got to the church just as a service was ending and heard the last part of the singing, which was truly beautiful. The church itself is lavishly decorated, in fact we found it almost obscene in the money represented by this, especially as much of it was gold, and no doubt real gold. Beautiful, but it always brings me back to that thought that there is so much money used to build and decorate places of worship where they then preach about giving to the poor….. old story, but still true, and sadly I expect always will be.
After the church moment we headed back out, only to find ourselves in another unexpected moment as a large band was gathering in the main courtyard. They started playing and headed off into town. Seems it pays to play hookey!!
Then we wandered into the garden and down to what we would call the Orangery where there is a café and a couple of intricately decorated rooms you can visit and are allowed to photograph.
I have included a close up of part of the ceiling fresco to show the almost cartoon like representation of both people and animals. Frescos were used to bring images of tribes and animals from around the world, unfamiliar to the local population and so errors or “artistic licence” would not have been noticed.
After wandering round the gardens we finally headed back through the town to the ship, passing the band again who had set themselves up in the main square.
We were back on the ship in time for lunch (more food!!) and this was followed by cruising through the Wachau Valley – the subject of my next post.
