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The Monastic Museum of Denmark |
The art of healing | Script and written word
Technology and work | The museum garden | The brewer's garden
Ground-plan over the ruins of The Monastery of Øm
The ruins of the great Monastery of Øm are the most complete ground-plan known of a Danish Cistercian monastery dating from the Middle Ages. The monastery was founded one spring day in 1172. The area was ideal for the original 13 monks as it was surrounded by the lakes of Mossø and Gudensø and easy to cultivate. The monks quickly set to work, changing the surrounding landscape with the introduction of canals between the two lakes. Munkekanalen (Monk Canal), the largest of them, is still visible in the landscape.
The monastery existed for almost 400 years and after the Lutheran Reformation it functioned as a seminary, in that sense the first university in Jutland, before finally being closed in 1560.
A year later on the orders of King Frederik II the demolition of the monastery began. The material was used to build the first Skanderborg Castle.
The Monastic Museum of Denmark 
Ticket office, special exhibitions and office
The chapel-house, art exhibition and picnic-room
- The brewer's garden in remembrance of the 103 barrels of beer that the monastery possessed in 1554
Denmark's oldest museum garden
Museum with a permanent exhibition of finds and skeletons
13th centuryThe West canal most probably constructed in 1172. It was the first levelling out in Denmark's history
Dam
Bishop Peder Elavsen's grave in the priory church chancel. He was bishop of Århus until 1246 and was buried in the then unfinished priory church
Priory church, consecrated in 1257
The church's northern transept with the exit into the churchyard
The churchyard
The priory church's western gable end
The church's southern transept with the staircase to the chorister monks' dormitory
The vestry with a door into the church
The library where the monks wrote parts of the Chronicle of Øm Monastery
The chapter house that was used as the monks' meeting room was made rectangular in the 1400's
Abbot Mikkel's grave
Possibly a stairway to the monks' dormitory
A room the use of which is unknown
Possibly the monastery's first dining room, refectory
15th and 16th century
The south wing with monastery's second refectory
The cloister
The friars' courtyard
The great west wing with victual cellar
The southern monastery courtyard
A room the use of which is unknown
The scullery
Oven/bakery/kiln
Kitchen
Guest wing
Hospital
Canal built in about 1495 for the hospital's flush toilets
Eastern canal
This reconstruction of the Monastery of Øm
is made by Holger Garner:
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