St Peter’s Abbey was founded in 696 by Saint Rupert at the site of a Late Antique church stemming from the first Christianization in the area.
In the Middle Ages, St Peter’s was known for its exceptional writing school.
In 1926, the Benedictine college (“Kolleg St. Benedikt”) was founded, on which later the re-foundation of the University of Salzburg was based. In 1927, St Peter’s was raised to the status of an Archabbey. Upon the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany in 1938, the premises were seized and the monks expelled. The monastery was not dissolved and the monks returned after the war.
The present-day Romanesque abbey church at the northern foot of the Mönchsberg was erected from about 1130 onwards at the site of a previous Carolingian church building, it was dedicated to Saint Peter in 1147.
Graves in the cemetery date from the 1200s.
