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Origin and history

The Priory of Alspach, located two kilometres from Kaysersberg in the Saint John Valley, was founded in the early 11th century (ca. 1000) by the Count of Eguisheim Hugues IV and his wife Heilwige, parents of Pope Leo IX. Originally occupied by Benedictine monks, he was affiliated in 1049 with the Hirsau congregation, a Swabian abbey. The site was entirely rebuilt between 1138 and 1149 at its present location, with a church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin, consecrated in 1149 by Ortlieb, bishop of Basel. The Romanesque architecture of this period includes a six-span nave, capitals carved of foliage, and a portal decorated with billets.

Between the 12th and 13th centuries, Benedictines consolidated their estate by acquiring land in Kientzheim, Sigolsheim, Ammerschwihr and Colmar. However, the Hirsau Abbey, in debt, ceded Alspach in 1282 to the Claress of Kientzheim, supported by Queen Anne of Germany (Gertrude of Hohenberg). The Gothic choir was then enlarged and consecrated around 1283. The convent buildings, rebuilt in the eighteenth century, housed after the Revolution a weaving factory, then a cardboard factory in the nineteenth century, resulting in the partial destruction of the church.

Ranked a historic monument in 1898, the priory today retains only the central Romanesque nave and the southern collateral, integrated since 2000 in an industrial courtyard. Six carved capitals (including one representing a lady with a deer and a fox) were moved to the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar. The remains, restored in 1972 by Kaysersberg's history society, now serve as a cultural hall. The name Alspach comes from the Weiss River, formerly called Alenspech, attested in the form Alwisbach (1130) or Alaspech (1364).

The site illustrates medieval monastic transformations from a prosperous Benedictine priory — marked by land acquisitions and remarkable Romanesque architecture — to a convent of clarisses, before its industrial conversion. The murals (including a medieval Saint Christophe today disappeared) and the remains of the cloister bear witness to his rich religious past. After 1794, the abbey became a dye factory, then a pulp mill (Weibel, 1879), before being preserved as a local heritage.

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