The summit of Mount Titlis wasn't conquered until 1744, and until the first foreign mountaineers arrived, the most important thing about Engelberg was its ancient Benedictine monastery.
Engelberg means angel mountain, and the monastery got its name when two monks saw a host of angels while walking in the nearby meadows. The monastery gave its name to the village that grew up around it, and an angel remains the symbol of the surrounding town.
Burnt down in 1729 and rebuilt in splendid baroque style, Engelberg's monastery is an impressive piece of architecture, but it's a living community, not an empty museum. It has its own blacksmith and florist and a well-stocked cheese shop, where you can buy cheeses made in the monastery, and elsewhere. There's also an extensive library, with books dating back to the middle ages.
A school for painters and writers ever since its foundation in 1120, this monastery was always a centre for learning as well as worship, and it still doubles as a school today.
Built around an ornate onion-domed chapel, with the biggest church organ in Switzerland, it's still home to 40 monks, but it's open to the public every day.
Until 1798, the Abbot of Engelberg was the ruler of the entire area - an independent bishopric answerable only to the Pope. More than 200 years after it became part of Switzerland, Engelberg still feels like a place apart, and this monastery is still the historic hub of this attractive little town.
