Vessra Abbey

The monastery was founded in the 1130s by Gotebold II, Count of Henneberg, and his wife Liutgard on a site near the confluence of the Schleuse and the Werra.

The church was dedicated in 1138; the foundation received papal confirmation three years later.

The former monastery served another four hundred years as an agricultural estate, mostly in private hands, but after World War II as a possession of the East German state, and from 1953 as the site of a collective farm (Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft, or LPG).

The ruins are nevertheless substantial and after stabilisation it remains the most significant Romanesque building in the region.

Of the monastic buildings themselves there remain the gate chapel and the accommodation block, including the ruins of the cloister.