Holyrood Abbey description and photos - Great Britain: Edinburgh (Topic)

Holyrood Abbey description and photos - Great Britain: Edinburgh. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Holyrood Abbey.

Photo and description

Holyrood Abbey (Abbey of the Holy Cross) was founded in 1128 by King David I of Scotland and belonged to Augustinian monks. The abbey played an important role not only in the religious but also in the political life of Scotland. Meetings of the nobility and higher clergy were held here, Scottish kings were crowned and married here. Kings often stayed in an abbey located near Edinburgh Castle, preferring to live here, and not in the castle itself, and already at the end of the 15th century there were separate royal apartments in the abbey, and at the beginning of the 16th century, King James IV was building a palace adjacent to the abbey - Holyrood House.

In the middle of the 16th century, the English troops captured the abbey and ravaged it - the building lost its leaden roof, bells were removed, valuables were looted. The Scottish Reformation soon began and the abbey was almost completely destroyed. In 1686, King James VII founded a Jesuit college at Holyrood, and the following year, the abbey became Catholic. The church was rebuilt anew and a chapel of the Most Ancient and Noble Order of the Thistle appeared in it, decorated with carved chairs according to the number of knights of the order. However, in 1688, a crowd of rebels broke into the church, destroying both the church and the chapel and desecrating the ancient royal burials. (The Order of the Thistle only got its own chapel in 1911 at St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh.)

The poorly repaired roof collapsed during a hurricane in 1768, and since then the abbey has remained in the state in which we are we can see it now - picturesque ruins, impressive remnants of its former greatness. Over the course of these 250 years, projects for the restoration and restoration of the abbey have appeared more than once, but none of them has been implemented.

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Topic: Holyrood Abbey description and photos - Great Britain: Edinburgh.