Melk Austria

We were up early so I worked on the blog as the internet is much faster early in the day as most other users are still asleep.  We are still sailing toward Melk and going through more locks.

We had breakfast with Joe, Emily, Stephen and Nancy.  As the cruise progresses, people tend to eat with those they have made friends with and not venture to meet more people.  I just had cereal this morning.

Our excursion was the tour of the Melk Abbey.  Melk has been an important spiritual and cultural center in Austria for over 1000 years.  It was once the residence of the Babenberg family.  It became a Benedictine Monastery in 1089, founded by Leopold II.  For over 900 years monks have continually lived and worked in the Abbey.   They continue to follow the rules laid down by St. Benedrict.  They have a school that has 750 students.

The monastery has been destroyed and rebuilt several times.  Today's architecture dates from the beginning of the 18th century.  One side of the Abbey is now a museum.

We visited the museum, the library and the Church.  All are in Baroque style.  Only about 10 monks still live here as all the monks are responsible for over 20 different churches.

This is a view of the Abbey from the parking lot.

You walk down these stairs to get to the Abbey level.

Some of the gardens along the way.

The front entrance to the Abbey.  This place is huge.

You enter a courtyard and come to another beautiful building

This is the first courtyard.  The left building is the former residence for visitors.  The monks live in the building on the right.  We are not sure what the center building is used for.

This is the dome of the Church attached to the Abbey.

The walls are painted with frescos.

The statue at the top of the stairs.  They have converted the residence to a museum.  We visited several rooms.  The rooms are now really an exhibit of the past.

The hallway is long.  The small door to the left at the bottom is used to load the wood for the heaters.  That way the visitors would not be disturbed.

This Romanesque depiction of the cross is probably from Vienna's oldest church, St. Ruprecht.  Later the crucifix was privately owned and was given to the Abbey as a gift in 1799. It is one of the oldest wooden crosses in Austria.

This is a reusable coffin.  In a circular dated August 24, 1784, the use of reusable coffins is required.  It was the opinion of Joseph II that wood prevented the human body from decaying.  Saving wood was only a secondary motivation.  These coffins could be opened with a pulley after they had been lowered into the grave.  The corpse remained in the grave and the empty coffin was pulled out again.

 The final room we visited was the marble hall that was used as a dining room.  The windows at the back of the room was used for music.  They could control the volume of the music by opening or closing of the windows.

The ceiling is painted.

The grate in the center of the room was used for heat.

The Abbey sits high on the hill so that you get a great view of the town of Melk.

To the right was the town and to the left was the river.  That is a Uniworld ship coming into Melk.  After our visit to the museum, we entered the library.  There were no pictures allowed in the library.  The books are all bound to look the same.  They have over 10,000 book in this library.  But all the books are placed on microfilm so that you do not get to see the entire book.  Did not see any "50 shades of Gray" in there. :-)

Our next stop was the Church.  Wow is all one can say.  They hold mass there every Sunday and Holy Day.  Today was a Holy Day but mass was over when we entered the Church.  This is the front altar.

The ceilings are just beautiful

Just more of the church.

Quite the pulpit.

Close up of one of the sculptors.

And of course, the pipes.

After we left the church, we headed back to the gardens.  This was the walk way to get out of the Abbey.

This is the pavilion in the gardens.  The gardens are open six months of the year and the rest of the year only for the monks.  The roses were not in bloom yet.

Back to the ship for lunch.  Then our nap.  When we woke we were in Durnstein.  We will be here again next week so I did not go out to walk the village.  Bob did.  I wanted to work on the blog and pictures but Bob's computer is not hooked to the internet.  Oh well.

The following are all pictures from Bob's walk into this small village.  The first is the ruin of a castle where Richard the Lionhearted was held.

The streets are quite narrow.   And with two river boats in town, quite crowded.

The church looked abandoned.  Bob could not find one to visit.

We sat with Bob, Rita, John, and Florrie from Ireland at dinner.  Then desserts were served in the lounge.  So we sat with Gordon, Joan, Tony and Sandy.  Rosalie sang about three songs and Joe sang one.  What fun.  Lot of dancing and being silly but not us.  We returned to the cabin to read and work on the blog.