Quedlinburg Abbey

Start with your feet. The path up the castle hill is paved with worn stone, uneven and polished smooth in places by centuries of shoes. As you climb, the red roofs of the old town fall away below you. Then the air cools. You are standing on a sandstone outcrop, and above you rise the pale towers of a church that has watched over this town for roughly a thousand years.

This is Quedlinburg Abbey, and its story begins with a death. In 936, Henry the First died. He was the king of the East Franks, the realm that would grow into medieval Germany. Many historians see him as the first in a line of German kings. His widow, Matilda, and their son, Otto, chose this hill for his burial. Around his grave, they founded a community of religious women.

That detail surprises many visitors. This was not a monastery of monks. It was a house for unmarried noblewomen, often daughters of the most powerful families in the empire. They lived by rules of prayer and study, but they were not nuns in the strict sense. Many kept their own property and could leave to marry. The abbess who led them answered to the emperor and the pope, not to a local bishop or prince.

The first abbess was a granddaughter of the founders, also named Matilda. She was the daughter of Otto the First, who became Holy Roman Emperor. For a time, while her relatives were away in Italy, she helped to govern parts of the realm. Think about that for a moment. In the tenth century, a woman on this hill held real political power, and the abbesses after her ruled the town below for centuries.

The church you see now is the Collegiate Church of Saint Servatius. A collegiate church is one served by a community, rather than a single parish. Earlier churches stood on this spot, but this building dates mostly from the early twelfth century. It is Romanesque, the heavy, round-arched style that spread across Europe before Gothic architecture arrived. Look for thick walls, small windows and a calm, solid weight.

Step inside and let your eyes adjust. The nave, the long central hall, has a quiet rhythm. A square pier stands, then two round columns, then another pier, and the pattern repeats. Architects call this alternating support, and it is typical of churches in this part of Saxony. Walk slowly along the aisle and you will feel the beat of it, like a measured step.

Now look up at the tops of the columns. The capitals carry carved leaves, interlaced bands and stylised plant forms. Some scholars think craftsmen with links to northern Italy worked on them. The stone is soft and warm in colour, and the carving is crisp in places, worn in others. These are small details, easy to pass by, but they show the hands of medieval stone carvers at work.

Below the choir lies the crypt, the oldest and most moving part of the building. Here, under low vaults, are the tombs of Henry and Matilda. Matilda's stone coffin is still in place. Henry's grave, however, is empty. His remains were lost long ago, and no one knows exactly what happened to them. The founding king of this place is, in a sense, missing from his own tomb.

The twentieth century brought a dark chapter here. In the 1930s, the Nazi regime took control of the church. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, believed he had a special connection to King Henry. He turned the building into a kind of shrine for his own ideology and held ceremonies here. Christian worship was pushed out. After the war, the church returned to its religious use, but this history is part of the building too.

Then comes one of the strangest stories in modern art history. At the end of the Second World War, the abbey treasure was hidden in a cave nearby for safety. An American soldier found it and quietly sent several precious objects home to Texas. For decades, no one knew where they were. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, pieces began to appear on the market. After a long legal effort, most of them came back to Quedlinburg.

That treasure is on display in the church today. It includes medieval manuscripts, reliquaries and ivory carvings. One of the most famous pieces is a gospel book known as the Samuhel Gospels, written in gold letters. When you stand in front of these objects, remember the long journey they made. They crossed an ocean and spent years in a private home before they finally came back to this hill.

The abbey survived for more than eight centuries. Its end came at the start of the nineteenth century. As Napoleon redrew the map of Europe, many church lands in Germany were taken by secular states. In 1803, the abbey was dissolved, and the town came under Prussian rule. The last abbess lost her title. A line of powerful women, unbroken for centuries, came to a quiet end.

Beside the church stands the castle, the former residence of the abbesses. Much of it was rebuilt in the Renaissance style. Today it holds a museum. From its terraces, the view opens over the old town. You can see the dense crowd of half-timbered houses below, their dark beams and light plaster packed together along narrow lanes. In 1994, UNESCO listed the church, the castle and the old town together as a World Heritage Site.

Before you go down, pause at the edge of the hill. Listen to the town below: footsteps on cobbles, a bell, a voice carried up on the wind. Look back at the twin towers and the rough sandstone under your hand. A queen buried her husband here a thousand years ago. As you walk down the slope, the old houses will rise around you again, and the abbey will stay above, as it always has.