A day trip to the Kartause Ittingen

24th Feb 2008

Today we took a trip to the Kartause Ittingen in the small town of Warth near Frauenfeld in eastern Switzerland. The Kartause Ittingen, a former Carthusian Charterhouse, has not been used as a Charterhouse since the mid-19th century and is now home to a chapel, a museum and vineyard as well as a hotel and seminar centre.

The museum is a fascinating exhibition of life as a Carthusian monk within this Charterhouse. On entering the museum, you are immeadiately able to visit the Charterhouse Chapel. The interior is decorated in the Baroque style. It is worth spending some time to admire the choir as it's highly carved wood and is absolutely marvellous. The decorated doors with marble effects are, in reality, painted wood and give a close up view of how a marble effect can be achieved. Heading upstairs affords an impressive aerial view of the whole chapel from two sides.

In the art collection, there is a large collection of works of the Thurgauer painter Adolf Dietrich (1877-1957). Other artists also represented include Camille Bombois, André Bauchant, Louis Vivin, Emeric Fejes, Erich Boedecker. The works of Helen Dahm, Hans Bruehlmann, Carl Roesch and Ernst Kreidolf give a view of the works of artists from the region from the last 100 years or so.

Having had a good look around the old Charterhouse, we headed back to Frauenfeld on foot. There are a number of cycle routes and Wanderwege which lead back from the Kartause Ittingen to Frauenfeld. Somehow we took a wrong turn and it took us around 30 minutes to get around half way. Thankfully, we found ourselves at a bus stop. And a bus was due in a few minutes. We boarded it.

Once back in Fraueneld, we popped in to the neo-Baroque St. Nikolaus Church (pictured right) before taking a rather reasonably priced pizza in a local pizzeria.

How we did this trip

We took the train from Zürich main train station to Frauenfeld. At Frauenfeld, we picked up a bus for Warth Kreuz and then took the short walk to the Kartause Ittingen. This return trip cost us 20.40 Francs with the Half-Fare Card.

Entrance to the grounds of the Charterhouse is free but entry to the museum cost us 7CHF each.

Related websites

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