Манастир, Бенедиктбойерн

One manuscript made this abbey famous far beyond Bavaria. When Benediktbeuern was dissolved in 1803 and its library carted off to Munich, the codex now known as Carmina Burana travelled with it — thirteenth-century songs of drink, fortune and love that Carl Orff would set more than a century later. The Benedictine house is among the oldest in Bavaria; its first abbot, Lantfrid, belongs to the 760s. Secularisation broke up some seven hundred hectares of its farmland among more than 150 local buyers. Since 1930 the Salesians of Don Bosco have held the site, running schools and youth work there alongside a Fraunhofer centre for energy-efficient building conservation. The baroque interiors take concerts and staged performances through the summer; Bizet's Carmen has been given within the walls.