Kloster Reichenstein

Premonstratensian canons received a castle called Richwinstinne from the dukes of Limburg in the 1130s and made a monastery of it, on a spur deep in the Rur valley some five kilometres west of Monschau and close to the Belgian border. It was a double house until about 1250, then a community of canonesses, then resettled from Steinfeld in 1487. Napoleonic secularisation closed it in 1802; sold in 1808 to the cloth manufacturer Bernhard Böcking, the church served in turn as sheepfold, cheese dairy and hay store until 1971. Ernst Wilhelm Handschumacher and his wife bought the site in 1973 and began its restoration; Benedictines from Notre-Dame de Bellaigue arrived in 2008, and the monastery was formally re-established in 2017. Concerts have been given in the restored spaces, Verdi among the composers heard.