The visit climbs the Imperial Staircase, runs the length of a 196-metre corridor, crosses the Marble Hall and the balcony into the library, and ends in the church. Choosing a Melk Abbey guided tour? This is what each part holds, in the order you walk it.
The Imperial Staircase rises from the south-west corner of the Prelate's Courtyard. It has limestone columns and rich stucco decoration. Two figures stand for Perseverance and Courage, the motto of Emperor Charles VI, and a double-headed eagle fills the ceiling. The rooms at the top were kept for noble guests.
The corridor runs almost the whole southern wing. Most of its portraits were painted in the eighteenth century by Franz Joseph Kremer, a pupil of Paul Troger.
The former imperial guest rooms hold the museum, "The Path from Yesterday to Today". Each room takes one theme.
The Marble Hall was the dining and festival hall for the imperial family and other important guests. Paul Troger painted its ceiling fresco in 1731. At the centre Pallas Athena rides a chariot drawn by lions, for wisdom and moderation. Hercules stands beside her, overcoming the three-headed hound of hell.
Both figures point to Emperor Charles VI, who liked to be cast as Hercules. The painted architecture around them is by Gaetano Fanti. The door frames are real marble from Adnet and the Untersberg, near Salzburg, but the walls are marble stucco. Over the doors, lines from the Rule of Saint Benedict ask that guests be received as Christ.
A terrace links the Marble Hall to the library. From it you look west over the town of Melk and the Danube, and back at the church towers. It is outdoors, so you can take photos here, which you cannot do in the rooms either side.
You see the main room and the room beside it, on the first floor. Together they were the whole library when it was furnished. The Upper Library, two rooms painted by Johann Wenzel Bergl and added in 1768, is not on the visit. The library is still a working one, used by researchers from around the world.
A restoration running from 2022 to 2032, costed at €12 million, has reached these two rooms. The library stays open, and the Baroque volumes stay on the shelves.
The church was meant only to be modernised. After 1701, at Abbot Berthold Dietmayr's wish, it was rebuilt completely to Jakob Prandtauer's plans. Its gold leaf, stucco and marble run through gold, ochre, orange, grey and green.
Antonio Beduzzi: the interior design and the sketches for the frescoes.
Johann Michael Rottmayr: the frescoes and altar paintings.
Paul Troger: altar paintings.
Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena: the designs for the pulpit and the high altar.
Mattielli and Widerin: Lorenzo Mattielli designed the sculptures, and Peter Widerin carved them.
Saint Coloman's relics lie in a sarcophagus in the left transept altar. The altar opposite is Saint Benedict's, and its sarcophagus is empty. The high altar's inscription reads "Non coronabitur nisi legitime certaverit": without a legitimate battle there is no victory.
Two bastions frame the abbey gate. The southern one faces the town, and the Northern Bastion faces the park. Prandtauer planned it, and it was built in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Its panoramic terrace, on the second floor, looks out over the park and the garden pavilion, from the Alpine foothills to Lower Austria's Forest Quarter. An outdoor staircase leads straight down into the park. The first floor holds the Wachau Lab, where students of the abbey school stage changing exhibitions. The gift shop is on the ground floor.
The minerals fill the former prelate's library, a Baroque room with stucco and a ceiling painted in 1643. That painting shows the abbey before its Baroque rebuild. The collection opens from April to October, daily from 13:30 to 15:30, for 25 people at a time. It is not step-free.
The Baroque park replaced the abbey's vineyard and orchard in the eighteenth century. It opened to visitors in 2000 after a fifteen-year revitalisation, laid out on three levels. The water basin sits among linden trees about 250 years old.
Franz Munggenast built the garden pavilion in 1747 and 1748 for the monks to rest in after fasting. Johann Wenzel Bergl painted it in 1763 and 1764 with exotic animals, jungle plants and the four continents then known. From April to October a self-service café runs in the pavilion.
The guided tour takes about 50 minutes and ends at the library. Everything after that is at your own pace, so allow at least two and a half hours for the whole visit.
| Space | On the guided tour | On your own | Season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Imperial Staircase and Corridor | Yes | Yes | All year |
| Museum in the Imperial rooms | Yes | Yes | All year |
| Marble Hall | Yes | Yes | All year |
| Balcony | Yes | Yes | All year |
| Library, two historical rooms | Yes | Yes | All year; partition walls to end-2027 |
| Abbey church | No, you continue alone | Yes | All year |
| Northern Bastion and Wachau Lab | No | Yes | All year |
| Mineral collection | No | Yes, 13:30–15:30 | April to October |
| Abbey park and garden pavilion | No | Yes | April to October |
| Upper Library, the Bergl rooms | No | No | Not open to visitors |
Some day tours from Vienna put the abbey's guided tour in the fare. Compare which do, and how long each gives you inside.
You cannot take photos or film in the interior rooms: the museum, the Marble Hall, the library and the church. Outdoors you can, on the balcony, in the courtyards, the park, the pavilion and the bastion. The library frame in the Melk Abbey gallery shows what the main room looks like.
The Upper Library, with its two Bergl rooms, is closed to visitors. The abbey has 497 rooms and 1,365 windows, and the visit shows you only a part of them.
Your own guide from your hotel at 8:30, with Dürnstein, the river cruise from Spitz to Melk and a private 75-minute tour of the abbey, all in the fare.
From $741 per person
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Krems, Dürnstein, an hour free in Melk and a 75-minute guided abbey visit, which is in the fare on winter dates and on the all-inclusive option in summer, when a Danube boat joins the day.
From $136 per person
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A 9:00 coach from the State Opera to Dürnstein, a short Danube cruise from April to October and 90 minutes at the abbey, with admission and a guided tour on the option that includes them.
From $142 per person
Check AvailabilityNext: read the history of Melk Abbey, plan the day on visiting Melk Abbey, or compare every fare on Melk Abbey Tours.