Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch

In 764 Count Cancor and his widowed mother Williswinda founded a monastery on their estate called Laurissa. Its first abbot was Cancor's cousin Chrodegang, Archbishop of Metz, and Benedictines from Gorze Abbey settled it. On 11 July 765 relics of Saint Nazarius arrived from Pope Paul I.

In 766 a property dispute led the monks to move from the first island site to a dune a few hundred metres away. In 772 the abbey was given to Charlemagne and became a royal abbey, and in September 774 the Archbishop of Mainz consecrated its church in his presence. After Louis the German died in 876 he was buried here, and the abbey went on to serve as a royal burial ground. Its ninth-century gatehouse, the Torhalle or Königshalle, is described as the oldest largely intact monument of Carolingian architecture.

A fire in 1090 was followed by large-scale rebuilding in the twelfth century, and in 1232 Lorsch passed to the Archbishop of Mainz. After the Elector Palatine introduced the Reformation in 1556, its library was moved to Heidelberg. Most of the buildings were pulled down after 1621 in the Thirty Years' War, and in 1623 the library was sent to Rome, where it became part of the Vatican Library. The abbey and the Altenmünster were inscribed in 1991.