Altzella Monastery Park

The Cistercians' Legacy

When the Lutheran rulers expelled the monks from the monasteries during the Reformation, the Cistercian Altzella Monastery near Meissen – one of the most important monasteries in Central Germany – was also dissolved and the grounds subsequently fell into disrepair. Over 1,000 precious books were given to the University of Leipzig. As Altzella was the hereditary burial place of the Wettin dynasty, however, the Dresden court never completely lost interest in the grounds. Elector Frederick Augustus III built an early classicist mausoleum here in 1787. The court gardener, Johann Gottfried Huebler, encircled the burial place with a romantic landscape park. It wasn’t long before romanticist painters such as Caspar David Friedrich and Ludwig Richter found inspiration in the mystical landscape, old pointed arches and sturdy gables.