Founded in 1142 by Blessed Hartmann, bishop of Brixen, it has always had a “mystical” bond with the land: its birth was due to generous donations of farms and land that soon grew to 100 estates. An important Romanesque-medieval cultural center, its heyday lies in the Renaissance, when to protect its precious manuscripts and works of art it was surrounded by a wall, which managed to protect it from Turkish aggression but not from peasant uprisings.

To the Baroque and Rococo dates the birth of the Academic Theological Studio, to Neoclassicism, that of the famous Library, witnessed with its 98,000 volumes to centuries of suppression, spoliation and reconstitution, from the Tyrolean wars to the Restoration, from Fascism to bombing by the Allies in World War II. A protagonist in the vicissitudes of its territory, like the rings of a tree, of each it bears traces around its ancient heart, the Abbey Church and cloister with the Well of Wonders.