Banz Monastery, with its 900 years of history, is located in the valley of the River Main in Upper Franconia. In about 1069 or 1071, Countess Alberada and her husband, Margrave Hermann of Vohburg, donated their castle on Mount Banz to the Benedictines as a monastery. In the Thirty Year War, the abbey was destroyed; between 1698 and 1780, it was rebuilt and extended first by Leonhard Dientzenhofer, and then, after his death, by Johann Dientzenhofer and Balthasar Neumann, to become one of the biggest monasteries in Bavaria. When the abbey closed as a result of secularisation, the monastery’s last glorious era came to an end. In 1814, Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria acquired Banz as his summer residence. Before being taken over by the Hanns Seidel Foundation as a meeting and education center in 1978, the monastery was in the possession of the missionary order of the „Society of the Holy Angels“. After extensive renovation and restoration work, the completion of Banz Monastery was celebrated in 1990. There are now 180 beds available for participants attending events; for conference work, there are twelve seminar rooms for groups of 15 to 300 persons. In connection with our support for junior journalists, a radio and television studio have also been set up. There are nearly 700 events a year for some 30,000 participants. In Banz Monastery you can see in a museum two remarkable collections open to the public.
