The St. Pölten Cathedral has been the cathedral of the St. Pölten diocese since 1785. It was the monastery church until the St. Pölten Augustinian Canons' Monastery was dissolved in 1784.
The origins of today's St. Pölten Monastery (St. Hippolytus) and thus of the cathedral go back to around the year 790. At this time, the brothers Adalbert and Otakar are said to have founded a daughter monastery in St. Pölten from the Tegernsee Monastery they had founded. The Benedictines also brought the Hippolytus relics to St. Pölten, from which the city's current name is derived. The monastery had been owned by the Diocese of Passau since 828.
The monastery was almost completely destroyed when the Magyars invaded around the year 907. It was only rebuilt after the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.
Around 1150, a three-aisled, transeptless church with double towers as the westwork was built, but it was extensively rebuilt between 1267 and 1280 after a fire. This church was consecrated in 1228 by Bishop Gebhard in honor of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, the patronage that the cathedral still bears today.
In 1512, there was a devastating fire throughout the city, after which the north tower was demolished and not rebuilt.
The cathedral's current appearance was created in the 17th century. After a fire in 1621, the current bishopric building was designed in the early Baroque style. The monastery at the time experienced its last high point in its construction history under Provost Johann Michel Führer. He found a like-minded partner in Jakob Prandtauer, who lived in the city. The planned renovation was to add a second floor to the diocese buildings and the exterior of the church was to have three towers (similar to Seitenstetten Abbey) with the existing tower as the center. This plan could not be fully implemented, mainly because Führer overextended himself financially and the abbey was almost bankrupt when he resigned in 1739. In addition to the generous redesign of the entire interior, mainly by Daniel Gran and Bartolomeo Altomonte, only the tower was raised and given a new dome.
In 1784, the abbey was abandoned by Joseph II. On January 28 of the following year, based on the papal bull Inter plurimas issued by Pius VI, the building became the bishop's seat (cathedral) of the newly founded diocese of St. Pölten.
Translated by Google •
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