Via Benediktbeuern to Bad Tölz – bike tour to the famous monastery through lovely landscapes

This stage of our bike tour takes us from Murnau at Lake Staffelsee via the Benediktbeuern monastery to Bad Tölz.

We leave Murnau and soon reach the Schwaiganger main and state stud. The stud farm looks back on over 1000 years of history. In the past it served primarily military purposes with the breeding and training of cavalry horses. Today it is a state institute for horse breeding and a training center for everything that has to do with horses and riding. Guided tours are also offered, but we are still too early for them.

Then we continue through a beautiful forest and moor route in the Loisach area and near Lake Kochelsee. We ride for kilometers through an idyllic meadow and forest landscape until we finally reach the famous Benediktbeuern monastery.

Benediktbeuern owes its early founding before the middle of the 8th century to its location at the foot of a prehistoric Alpine crossing into the Tyrolean region. The original church patron was the Apostle James; Only later did the monk father Benedict take this position. His veneration was significantly promoted when Charlemagne gave the monastery a forearm relic of the saint. In 1490 a major fire destroyed the entire monastery complex. The monastery and church were then rebuilt in late Gothic forms.
The baroque monastery complex was built in 1669. At that time, the monastery was doing very well economically and could build accordingly magnificently. Both the large monastery complex, whose wings are grouped around an inner courtyard, and the monastery church date from this period. Important artists such as Georg Asam, Johann Baptist Zimmermann and Johann Michael Fischer gave the monastery its current shape. The monastery church of St. Benedict is one of the first important baroque churches in the countryside in Upper Bavaria. The interior in particular, with its rich stucco figures and ceiling paintings, is one of the most beautiful in Bavaria. The ceiling paintings come from Georg Asam, the father of the famous Asam brothers Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin.
The Anastasia Chapel is right next to the church. It was completed in 1758 as a thank you for the so-called Lake Kochelsee Miracle and is a masterpiece of Bavarian Rococo.
In 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the enemy advanced across the frozen Lake Kochelsee towards Benediktbeuern, but had to retreat again due to a sudden onset of the warm foehn wind, which caused the ice on the lake to break up. This rescue happened on the name day of Saint Anastasia. The chapel impresses with its bright, festive colors. The room with the precious silver bust of Saint Anastasia is closed off with a delicately forged grille, through which the entire chapel and especially the impressive vault fresco can be viewed.
In 1803 the monastery was secularized. But since 1930, the Catholic order of the Salesians of Don Bosco has once again provided monastic life and a spiritual center here.

The sky has become cloudy and a thunderstorm is brewing over the mountains. We hurry and are able to avoid the storm except for a few drops. A few weeks after our visit, Benediktbeuern was unfortunately not so lucky. During a severe storm with hail and heavy rain, the monastery buildings suffered massive damage and are currently (November 2023) still closed.

We now reach Bad Tölz. The spa town on the Isar is known for its historic old town with the picturesque market street. We push our bikes through Market Street, now a pedestrian zone with beautiful Alpine-style houses and lots of Lüftl painting, to our hotel.

In the next video about our bike tour we will explore Bad Tölz and then continue to Tegernsee

You can find the Komoot link to the bike tour here: https://www.komoot.de/tour/1363990925

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You can find the complete channel playlist for our bike tour from Augsburg to Tegernsee here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlJEw93joUmpybqtzDxdBRerdMVIK3cij

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Bike tour in June 2023

Chapter
00:00 Intro
00:47 Departure from Murnau
01:07 Schwaiganger Stud
02:11 Through the moorland
03:16 Benediktbeuern Monastery
07:15 Anastasia Chapel
09:40 Through the foothills of the Alps
09:58 Arrival in Bad Tölz
11:29 Outro

Song: Summer
Music composed and recorded by Oak Studios.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpRPzujTa7w&t=0s | Creative Commons – Attribution ND 4.0