Lorsch

gatehouse of the Carolingian abbey at Lorsch, Germany

Lorsch, village, Hessen Land (state), central Germany, north of Mannheim. It is best known for the ruins of its medieval abbey, from which excavations in 1932 uncovered fragments of an early pictorial stained-glass window dating from the Carolingian period (8th–9th century). The abbey and its entrance (Torhall) were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991. Lorsch is the burial place of Louis II (the German) and Louis III (the Younger), both 9th-century kings of Saxony, and the village is mentioned in the 13th-century German epic Nibelungenlied as the burial place of Siegfried. Pop. (2007 est.) 12,828.