Altomünster Abbey

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Altomünster Abbey was a monastery in the small Bavarian market town of Altomünster.

A small monastery was founded here by and named after Saint Alto, a wandering monk, in about 750.

Sometime before 1000 the Welfs enlarged it and made it into a Benedictine abbey. Welf I, Duke of Bavaria resettled the monks in 1056 to the newly founded Weingarten Abbey in Altdorf (now also called Weingarten), while the nuns formerly resident at Altdorf moved to Altomünster, where they lived until the dissolution of monastery in 1488 by Pope Innocent VIII.

In 1496 by grant of Duke George the Rich the Bridgettines of Maihingen were permitted to establish a Bridgettine nunnery at Altomünster. The nunnery was dissolved on 18 March 1803 during the secularisation of Bavaria, but was later revived. Today, along with a settlement in Bremen, it is the last Bridgettine house in Germany. Nearby is a museum of the history of the Bridgettine Order.