It was raining hard on one of my days in Vienna so i decided to head out
to a random town mentioned in the lonely planet book. Melk is about
an hour out of Vienna on a train ride through the pretty Austrian
countryside.
The
town itself is very cute – baroquey with pastel colours and
cobblestone streets.
The
main highlight however is the abbey (called Stift Melk). Perched up
on the hill over-looking the town it is extremely elaborate for a
monastery.
The
outside and gardens are impressive enough but the interior is AMAZING
(i definitely wasn't going to ask for my 8 Euros back).
You
walk through some museum exhibits (very impressively displayed church
relics) in some very nice, fresco-ceilinged rooms. Then you come to
a balcony (with sweeping vistas over the town, woods and river) and
enter back in to the library which is spectacularly old school
(ancient leather-bound manuscripts on huge, high wooden shelves,
surrounded by antique furnishings, including globes!). The library
occupies several rooms, including an out of bounds area containing
the valuable books which you can only access with the Librarian's
permission. Yes, there is a Librarian stationed at the entrance and a
reading room in which to consult the manuscripts.
From
the library you descend a very ornate spiral staircase (complete with
a mirrored bottom) and turn the corner to ... a gaspingly ornate
church (it actually did make me gasp). Everywhere you look there is
an extravagance of frescoes, gold-plated sculptures, marble of
various colours...words can't really describe it. All i know is that
it would be extremely hard to actually take in a sermon with all that
wonderful distraction around you. I swear, there was not a blank
surface to be found anywhere!
