The name of Mount " Sainte-Odile " (about 2200ft high) is derived from the convent standing on the mountain-top. It is a woody steep sloped hill on the northern point of the Bloss mountains and it overlooks the plain of Alsace.
Here, in the 7th century, Etichon or Adalric, a duke of Alsace, built the castle of Hohenbourg. He turned it into a monastery about 685, and his daughter Odile was appointed first prioress. At the end of the 12th century, Herrade de Landsberg, a famous prioress, wrote the Hortus Deliciarum (the garden of delights), a sort of richly illustrated Christian encyclopedia for the nuns.
In the 16th century, after a frightful fire, the nuns left the mountain. Some " Prémontrés " priests rebuilt the convent and stayed till the Revolution. Then the monastery was sold, and at last the convent was bought by the bishop of Strasbourg in 1853 and it was rebuilt once more.