The Old Refectory @museum.de

Just opposite the door to the Imperial Tower is the entrance to the former refectory, where the nuns took their meals. You’re welcome to open the door and take a look inside. The room has impressive ribbed vaulting. Architectural historians believe that in late medieval times, the prince's kitchen and the infirmary kitchen adjoined this remarkable space.

Beneath the floor, archaeologists have discovered medieval ventilation shafts. The heat generated during cooking would have moved through those shafts into the abbey’s main communal areas. So you might even say modern central heating was invented in the monasteries!

The room where the nuns’ meals were once prepared now hosts the registry office run by the municipality of Heiligengrabe. So it would be perfectly possible to have both a civil ceremony and a church wedding, both on the same day.

A solution as romantic as it is practical!