St. Blasien Dome

Obscure start

The early history of the abbey is obscure

A cell of Rheinau Abbey, called cella alba, the white cell, is supposed to have been its predecessor in the 9th century. The first definite abbot of St Blaise's was Werner I.

Estates

By the 15th century its estates covered the whole Black Forest

In the 11th century the abbey followed the reforms of Fruttuaria in Italy and influenced many other houses. In the 12th century the monks turned to managing estates, which by the 15th century spread across the whole Black Forest.

A factory

In 1806 the abbey was dissolved and the buildings became a factory

The abbey was dissolved in 1806, and its premises were used as one of the earliest mechanised factories in Germany. The monks under the last Prince-Abbot, Berthold Rottler, settled in Austria in 1809. A Jesuit college has stood here since 1934.

The dome

After a fire in 1768 the church was rebuilt as a round church

The abbey church burnt down in 1768. Pierre Michel d'Ixnard rebuilt it as a Neoclassical round church, with a dome 46 metres across, the third-largest in Europe north of the Alps. It was consecrated in 1784.

46 metresacross, the width of the dome

Not a cathedral

The Dom is called a cathedral, but it is not one

It is called St Blaise's Cathedral because of its size, though it is not a cathedral in any ecclesiastical sense. The effects of another catastrophic fire, in 1874, were only finally remedied in the 1980s.