Sénanque Abbey

Interesting facts

In 1969 the last five monks left, and the truck maker Berliet leased the abbey for 30 years, restoring it with original materials and techniques.

From 1970 to 1988 the abbey ran a cultural centre that drew figures such as Edgar Morin, Pierre Mendès France and the sculptor Jean Tinguely.

Within four years of its founding the community had grown large enough to send monks off to found a daughter abbey, Chambons, in 1152.

The warming room, the only heated space in the monastery, also served as the scriptorium where monks copied manuscripts.

The cloister capitals are carved with nothing but plain water-leaf forms, a deliberate refusal of decoration that might distract from prayer.

In 1544, amid the religious violence in the Luberon, monks were hanged and the monastery was set on fire.

By the late 17th century only two monks remained at Sénanque.

Sold off as national property in 1791, it was lucky in its buyer, who protected the buildings and even had them reinforced.

After the abbey was bought back in 1857, new wings were added and as many as 72 monks came to live there.

The abbey stands in the narrow valley of the Sénancole stream, and the community's day still begins with the first office at 4.30 in the morning.

Why it is worth it

Sénanque Abbey sits at the bottom of a narrow, wooded valley near Gordes, in the hills of Provence, and in early summer it becomes one of the most photographed images in France: a grey stone Romanesque church and cloister rising behind rows of purple lavender. The flowers are beautiful, but the building deserves attention in its own right. It is one of the purest examples of early Cistercian architecture, a style that turned away from sculpture and colour and made beauty out of proportion, light and bare stone.

Cistercian monks from Mazan Abbey founded Sénanque in 1148, with the support of the Bishop of Cavaillon and the Count of Provence. The abbey church was consecrated in 1178. The valley was so tight that the builders could not orient the church in the usual way: its apse, the liturgical east end, actually faces north. The church, cloister, chapter house, dormitory and warming room, the one heated space where the monks could work in winter, survive in remarkably complete form. Together with Le Thoronet and Silvacane, Sénanque is known as one of the "Three Sisters of Provence", the three great Cistercian houses of the region.

The abbey prospered in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when it ran mills and granges across the area, but it later declined. By 1509 only about a dozen monks remained, and the Wars of Religion and the Revolution dealt it heavy blows. A new Cistercian community bought it back in 1854, left again at the start of the twentieth century, and in 1988 a small community returned as a priory of the Abbey of Lérins. Monks still live here, grow lavender and keep bees, so parts of the abbey are a place of silence rather than a museum.

The lavender is usually at its peak from late June to mid-July; for the building itself, come in the soft light of morning or late afternoon, when the simple volumes of the church stand out against the dark green of the valley. The fields themselves are cultivated and not open for walking.

Getting there

The abbey is about 5 km from Gordes by a winding road; the nearest larger town is L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, about 11 km away. The nearest airport is Avignon Provence (AVN), about 23 km away. There is no practical public transport, so most visitors arrive by car; parking at the abbey is limited, so arrive early or late in the day.

Sénanque Abbey

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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