Why go
The abbey story changes how you see the castle and church area. They belong to a much larger institution than the surviving buildings suggest. Its lands reached into the Aare and Gürbe valleys, while the Reformation turned a religious complex into offices, a hospital and, eventually, the New Castle.
The full story
Interlaken Abbey was first mentioned in 1133, when Emperor Lothair III placed it under his protection. It grew into the region's largest religious landholder, with authority over churches, villages and farms. Women were present by 1247, and the community expanded strongly through the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Later debt, disputes and falling membership weakened it. The women's convent closed in 1484. In 1528, the Protestant Reformation secularized the abbey and Bern took over its lands through a bailiff. Expectations that tenants would no longer owe payments led to unrest, which Bern suppressed. The buildings then took on new uses: district administration and a hospital occupied parts of the complex, and the church choir became a granary and wine cellar in the 1560s. In the eighteenth century, the west wing gave way to the New Castle. The site therefore tells a sequence of religious, economic and civic power, rather than a single preserved monastic moment.