Kloster Maria-Rickenbach, Benedictine monastery in Niederrickenbach, Switzerland.
Kloster Maria-Rickenbach is a Benedictine monastery in Niederrickenbach, Switzerland, comprising a chapel, residential areas, extensive gardens, and a small shop. The sisters grow herbs across the grounds and transform them into products that visitors can purchase on site.
The monastery was founded in 1857 when women seeking monastic life established their community in a converted farmhouse. By the early 1860s, it had been expanded into a complete religious complex with all necessary structures.
Niederrickenbach has been a pilgrimage site since the 16th century, when a shepherd hid a statue of the Virgin Mary in a hollow maple tree during the Reformation; a chapel is documented from 1565, and the present chapel was consecrated in 1869. The monastery keeps Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and the sisters sell tea from their herb garden and a gold liqueur in the monastery shop.
The cable car leaves from Niederrickenbach station on the Luzern–Stans–Engelberg line and climbs to the village; a private road from Dallenwil also leads up but is not open to the public. The Benedictine Way hiking trail connects the monastery with Engelberg Abbey and is fairly demanding.
The monastery's convent crib, a two-metre crib mountain with 136 figures from the 18th and 19th centuries, is of supra-regional importance. The figures are made of wood and wire, most heads of tinted wax, dressed in coloured costumes; many probably came from Lucerne with Sister M. Pia Richlin in 1869.
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