Echternach Abbey and Basilica of Saint Willibrord
Benedictine abbey founded in 698, with a Romanesque basilica, Baroque palace and museum of manuscripts.
The Benedictine abbey of Echternach was founded in 698 by the Northumbrian missionary Willibrord, on land granted by Irmina of Oeren. Its scriptorium became one of the most productive in northern Europe, turning out illuminated gospel books including the Codex Aureus of Echternach and the Codex Epternacensis. The abbey was dissolved during the French Revolution and its buildings were later used as a porcelain factory and then as a school; the present Baroque conventual quarters were built between 1727 and 1731 to designs by Leopold Durand.
The abbey church, raised to the rank of minor basilica, keeps its Romanesque plan of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. It was almost destroyed in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and was rebuilt in Romanesque Revival form by 1953. Willibrord's white marble sarcophagus lies in the crypt, the goal of the annual Dancing Procession held on Whit Tuesday and inscribed by UNESCO in 2010. The Abbey Museum, in the vaulted cellars of the palace, shows facsimiles of the manuscripts.
Highlights
- Abbey founded by Saint Willibrord in 698
- Romanesque basilica rebuilt after the Battle of the Bulge
- Willibrord's marble sarcophagus in the crypt
- Museum of Echternach manuscripts in the 1727 cellars
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