Willibrord's tomb
A marble sarcophagus in the crypt.
Txllxt TxllxT — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Marc Ryckaert — CC BY 3.0 · Txllxt TxllxT — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Txllxt TxllxT — CC BY-SA 4.0
An annual religious procession through the streets of Echternach on the morning of Whit Tuesday, in which thousands advance with a regular sideways hopping step to the rhythm of bands, linked in rows by white handkerchiefs. Its origin is uncertain — accounts mention a plague or older healing rites — and it has continued for centuries despite periods when the church tried to suppress it. It has been on the UNESCO list since 2010.
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Echternach Abbey is Luxembourg's oldest religious foundation and its most historically important: founded in 698 by St Willibrord, an Anglo-Saxon monk from Northumbria sent to convert the Frisians, who made Echternach his base. The whole town grew around the abbey rather than the other way about. In the centuries that followed the abbey became a first-rank centre of copying and manuscript production: its workshop produced illuminated books in a manner blending Insular Irish-English traditions with Carolingian ones, the best known being the Golden Gospels of Echternach, now kept in Nuremberg. It was among the most important book centres in northern Europe. The present buildings are eighteenth-century Baroque after rebuilding, and the church was reconstructed after its destruction in 1944. Willibrord's marble tomb lies in the crypt. What makes the abbey known today is the Dancing Procession on Whit Tuesday: a march in which participants advance by hopping in linked rows, a tradition centuries old and inscribed on the UNESCO intangible heritage list.
A marble sarcophagus in the crypt.
A workshop among northern Europe's great book centres.
Parvis de l'Abbaye, 6486 Echternach