St. Georgenberg-Fiecht Abbey

St. Georgenberg-Fiecht Abbey, the successor of St. Georgenberg Abbey, is a Benedictine monastery situated since 1708 in Fiecht in the community of Vomp in Tyrol, Austria; a pilgrimage church still stands on the original site on the Georgenberg. Founded in 1138, it is the oldest extant monastery in the Tyrol.

According to tradition, the site's first use was as a hermitage in about the middle of the 10th century by Blessed Rathold (or Rapoto) of Aibling, of the ancient noble family of the Rapotonen, who established his cell on the Georgenberg ("St. George's Mount"), a rocky outcrop rising some hundred metres above the Stallental valley near Stans.

Substantial donations to the community as early as 1000 or thereabouts from Albuin, Bishop of Brixen, and in 1097 from Emperor Henry IV suggest that by that time there was already a well-established monastery here rather than a simple hermitage.

The religious community at St. Georgenberg was turned into a Benedictine abbey in 1138 by Reginbert, Bishop of Brixen; the papal charter of confirmation is dated 30 April 1138.

On 31 October 1705 there occurred the fourth in a series of disastrous fires which ruined all the buildings, and the abbey was moved to a new site at Fiecht in the Inn valley. It became operative again in 1708.

Because of lack of funds, however, the new conventual buildings and church (begun in 1741 and finished in 1750; its tower was finished as late as 1781) were uniquely modest in their construction, but for that very reason are the more impressive as examples of Baroque architecture. Only the inside of the church and the trompe l'oeil façade, only visible from the monastic buildings, were finished in the typical style of the era: stuccoists of the Wessobrunn School, such as Franz Xaver Feuchtmayer the Elder and his brother Michael, the frescoist Matthäus Günther and other renowned sculptors from the Tyrol and elsewhere were engaged for these parts of the construction.

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