Abbaye de Clairvaux

Ville-sous-la-Ferté

In 1115, a 25-year-old monk named Bernard made his way with a handful of companions into a wild valley of Champagne, the "Val d'Absinthe," to found an abbey according to the Cistercian ideal of poverty and silence. The place would take the name Clairvaux — the clear valley — and become one of the spiritual hearts of medieval Europe: under the abbacy of Saint Bernard, crusade preacher and advisor to popes, the abbey spread into hundreds of daughter houses across the continent. Its scriptorium built a prodigious library: more than 1,100 manuscripts from Clairvaux, now kept in Troyes, are inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. Then the story turns: sold during the Revolution, the abbey was converted in 1808 by Napoleon into the largest prison in France. In the great cloister rebuilt in the 18th century, the monks' cells became prisoners' cages. Those held there included Claude Gueux, whom Victor Hugo made the hero of his indictment of the death penalty. The guided tour crosses nine centuries in which monastic enclosure and prison confinement echo each other disturbingly: the Romanesque lay-brothers' building, the refectories, the cell blocks. A place unique in Europe, as moving for its Cistercian light as for its memory of shadows.

Getting there : In Ville-sous-la-Ferté, between Bar-sur-Aube and Châteauvillain. Guided tour only (about 1h15) departing from the Hostellerie des Dames; ID required, photography forbidden because of the site's penal past. Check opening days before visiting.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound