Construction of Maulbronn Monastery

Maulbronn Monastery is a Cistercian abbey in the Baden-Württemberg region of southwestern Germany. It was founded in the twelfth century by monks, and it grew into a wealthy community that held large estates and vineyards in the area. It is considered the best-preserved medieval monastic complex north of the Alps, with its church, cloister, refectory, and water-management system and fortified walls largely intact. After the Reformation the monastery was turned into a Protestant school, and its pupils included the astronomer Johannes Kepler, the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the writer Hermann Hesse, who used the setting for his novel Beneath the Wheel. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1993.

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