Altenberg Abbey

Altenberg Abbey is the well-preserved Gothic church of a former Cistercian monastery founded in 1133, set in a forested valley in the Bergisches Land about 25 kilometres northeast of Cologne. The current church, built from the 13th century onward, is considered one of the finest Gothic structures in North Rhine-Westphalia, particularly noted for its elaborate tracery windows. Until 1511 it served as the dynastic burial site of the Counts and Dukes of Berg and the Dukes of Jülich-Berg. When the monastery was dissolved during secularisation in 1803, most of the monastic complex fell to ruin; the church survived partly thanks to 19th-century restoration funding by Prussian King Frederick William IV. Since 1857 it has functioned as a Simultankirche — shared simultaneously by both Catholic and Protestant congregations — one of the rare active examples of this arrangement in Germany.