Kloster Polling, about 5km east of Peiting, is a former Augustinian Canons' monastery that was one of the most culturally significant religious houses in Bavaria during the medieval and early modern periods. Its library, assembled over centuries, became one of the most important collections of medieval manuscripts in the German-speaking world before the monastery was secularised in 1803 during the Napoleonic reorganisation of Bavaria. The manuscripts were dispersed — many went to what is now the Bavarian State Library in Munich — but the buildings themselves survived.
The monastic church, the Stiftskirche Polling, is the main reason to visit today. It is an imposing late-Baroque structure, heavily decorated in the Bavarian fashion with ceiling frescoes, gilded altars and carved choir stalls. The scale is well beyond what you would expect from such a rural location, a reminder of just how wealthy and influential these Augustinian foundations were before secularisation. The church is open to visitors.
The surrounding village of Polling is quiet and the monastery complex is partly in private or institutional use. A short detour from Peiting on a bike or by car, it fits naturally into a day spent exploring the Pfaffenwinkel churches — the contrast between the modest exterior and the lavish interior is characteristic of the whole region.