Notable alumni include mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius, historian Leopold von Ranke, and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Today, it is a notable public boarding school for academically gifted children, otherwise called Landesschule Pforta.

Pforta was proposed for inscription in the World Heritage List as one component of the German nomination Naumburg Cathedral and the High Medieval Cultural Landscape of the Rivers Saale and Unstrut.

[1] This foundation, not being successful, on 23 April 1132, Bishop Udo I of Naumburg [de], a relative of Bruno's, replaced the Benedictines by Cistercian monks from Walkenried Abbey.

The situation here proved undesirable, and in 1137 Udo transferred the monastery to Pforta, and conferred upon it fifty hides of arable land, an important tract of forest, and two farms belonging to the diocese.

Under the third abbot, Adetold, two daughter houses were founded under Pforta's auspices, in the Mark of Meissen and in Silesia, and in 1163, the monasteries of Altzella and Leubus were also established in the latter province.

The remains of the monastery include the 13th century gothic church;[6] it is a cross-vaulted, colonnaded basilica with an extraordinarily long nave, a peculiar western façade, and a late Romanesque double-naved cloister.

Schulpforta was one of the three Fürstenschulen ("prince's schools") founded in 1543 by Maurice, Elector of Saxony (at that time Duke), the two others being at Grima and at Meissen.