Abbey of Fontenay
Abbaye de Fontenay
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The abbey takes its name from the many springs on the site, which lies where the Saint-Bernard combe meets the Fontenay stream valley.
- Pope Eugene III consecrated the church in 1147 in the presence of ten cardinals and eight bishops.
- Sold in 1791 for 78,000 francs, the abbey became a paper mill driven by the monks' old water systems and stayed one for almost a century.
- From 1820 the paper mill belonged to Élie de Montgolfier, a member of the family that invented the hot-air balloon.
- Railway pioneer Marc Seguin, Montgolfier's son-in-law, put up a building in 1850 on the site of the demolished refectory.
- The 1905–1911 restoration demolished the factory buildings, dug the church floor out by about 80 cm and rebuilt one cloister wing stone by stone.
- The church's 13th-century Virgin and Child, in which the infant holds a dove, stood for a long time out in the weather in the cemetery of nearby Touillon.
- Hunting dogs of the Dukes of Burgundy were once boarded in a kennel here, and the porter's lodge still has a hole through which its dog could poke its head.
- The designer Andrée Putman, born Christine Aynard and granddaughter of the abbey's restorer, spent most of her childhood summers here.
- The abbey has served as a film location for Angélique, Marquise des Anges in 1964 and Cyrano de Bergerac in 1990.
Why it is worth it
Fontenay is the Cistercian ideal almost untouched: a monastery founded by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118 in a wooded Burgundy valley near Montbard, and still standing with nearly all of its 12th-century buildings. Bernard wanted an order stricter than Cîteaux itself, and the architecture shows it. There is no bell tower, no carved flowers on the capitals, no painted images anywhere; the only ornament is proportion and light. It is one of the oldest and most complete Cistercian abbeys in Europe and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981.
The monks moved to the present site in 1130. The Bishop of Norwich, who took refuge here in 1139, helped pay for the church, and Pope Eugene III consecrated it in 1147. By around 1200 the complex could house up to three hundred monks, and in the 13th century it was freed from taxes and made a royal abbey. It was sacked by English troops in the Hundred Years' War and damaged again in the Wars of Religion. After the Revolution emptied it, the buildings became a paper mill. In 1906 the Lyon banker Édouard Aynard bought the property and restored it by 1911; his descendants still own it.
The church is a Latin cross with a nave 66 metres long under a pointed barrel vault, a square-ended apse and rectangular chapels off the transept, a plan copied across Cistercian Europe. Light enters through plain windows whose number and spacing follow musical ratios. The cloister, roughly 36 by 38 metres, has paired columns with simple leaf capitals. Beyond it are the vaulted chapter house, the great dormitory under a 15th-century chestnut roof, the warming room and a dovecote. Only the refectory has gone, pulled down in 1745.
Set apart to the south is the long building known as the forge, over 53 metres in length. Tradition made it a metal workshop, but architectural comparison suggests a brewery or bakehouse, a reminder that Cistercian houses were working estates as well as places of prayer. Today the buildings stand in clipped lawns and gravel parterres, and the valley around them is quiet enough that the scale of Bernard's austerity is easy to feel.
Getting there
The abbey is in the commune of Marmagne, about 6 km from Montbard; Autun is some 77 km away. The nearest airport by straight line is Châlons Vatry (XCR), about 127 km off, but most international visitors come through Paris: trains reach Montbard TGV station in about 66 minutes, and the abbey is about 5 km from the station by taxi or bicycle. By road it is roughly 250 km from Paris via the A6 (exit Bierre-lès-Semur).
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Abbey of Fontenay is a former Cistercian abbey located in the commune of Marmagne, near Montbard, in the département of Côte-d'Or in France. It was founded by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118, and built in the Romanesque style. It is one of the oldest and most complete Cistercian abbeys in Europe, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Of the original complex comprising church, dormitory, cloister, chapter house, caldarium, refectory, dovecote and the so-called "forge", all remain intact except the refectory and are well maintained. The Abbey of Fontenay, along with other Cistercian abbeys, forms a connecting link between Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
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