The Benedictine abbey of Disentis stands above an Alpine pass threaded by a tributary of the mighty Rhine – a stirring landscape of thrusting and plunging diagonals, to which one of Switzerland’s oldest monasteries brings a touch of man-made grandeur.

With its exuberant baroque facade and shapely bulb-domed bell towers, Disentis seems not so much to exalt the Creator’s works as to rival them.