Fulda Abbey

Saint Boniface, known as the 'Apostle of the Germans,' was martyred in Frisia in 754 and his remains were transported to Fulda, the monastery founded by his disciple Saint Sturm in 744. His tomb made Fulda the most important pilgrimage site in Germany and the spiritual center of the Carolingian missionary movement.

The abbey was founded in 744 by Saint Sturm, a Bavarian Benedictine monk and direct disciple of Saint Boniface, in the town of Fulda in Hesse. Boniface himself had requested that a monastery be established in the remote area, and Sturm led the initial community of monks.

Under abbot Rabanus Maurus in the early 9th century, Fulda's scriptorium became one of the most prolific centers of manuscript production and religious scholarship in the Carolingian empire. The abbey's library housed thousands of texts, and its school educated many of the leading churchmen of the era.

The centerpiece is the Fulda Cathedral (Dom St. Salvator), a Baroque cathedral built on the site of the original abbey church, under which Saint Boniface's tomb remains. The cathedral and adjacent monastery buildings feature significant Baroque architecture from the 18th-century reconstruction.