Buildings
Most of the ecclesiastical buildings still exist, though they are no longer used for religious purposes. In the secularisation of 1802 the abbey was dissolved and its assets taken over by the Duchy of Württemberg.
The present-day Late Romanesque St. Vitus Basilica was consecrated in 1233, after a 12th century preceding building had been devastated by a blaze. Today it serves as the parish church of Ellwangen. A cloister was added in 1467 and in the 17th century the interior was largely refurbished in a Baroque style. From 1737 onwards it was again decorated with further Rococo supplements, among them works by Carlo Carlone. In 1964 the church was elevated to the status of a Basilica minor by Pope Paul VI.
Ellwangen Castle (Schloss ob Ellwangen) from 1460 on served as the residence of the Prince-provosts, it was rebuilt in a Baroque style about 1726. From 1802 a property of the House of Württemberg it was for a short time the exile of Princess Catharina and her husband Jérôme Bonaparte in 1815/16. The castle is today administrated by the State of Baden-Württemberg, it hosts a museum and a youth hostel.
Read more about this topic: Ellwangen Abbey
Famous quotes containing the word buildings:
“The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter’s at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,—faint copies of an invisible archetype.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)