There’s a disturbing emptiness about monastic buildings that no longer house monastic life: the hours, the offices, the ora et labora. And you find it at Kloster Eberbach, one of the most idyllically located monasteries in all of Germany.
Set in the rolling hillsides of the Rheingau – close to Mainz, and famous for wine-making – it hasn’t housed a monk since 1803 when the remnants of a flourishing Cistercian community moved out.
From then on it served various functions, as a prison, a stable, and more recently a film set: if you remember the darkly atmospheric clerical whodunnit Name of the Rose, the interior scenes were all shot at Eberbach, and latterday tour-guides dutifully point out the steps, doorways and cellars where Sean Connery pondered a mysterious sequence of deaths – as though these places had never served a greater purpose.
