Essen Abbey was a community of secular canonesses that formed the nucleus of modern Essen. The Saxon Altfrid, later Bishop of Hildesheim and a saint, founded it around 845. He also built the canonesses' church, the Stiftskirche. It became an imperial abbey between 874 and 947. Abbess Mathilde governed from 973 to 1011, which the article calls the abbey's best years. Abbesses were first called Princesses in 1228.
The church, later the Essener Münster, became Essen Cathedral in 1958. The cathedral treasury includes the Golden Madonna of Essen and the Cross of Otto and Mathilde.
Prussian troops occupied the abbey in 1802, and it was dissolved in 1803. The last abbess, Maria Kunigunde von Sachsen, died in Dresden on April 8, 1826.
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