Abbaye Notre-Dame de la Trappe

Soligny-la-Trappe

On 25 November 1120, the White Ship sank off Barfleur, drowning the flower of Anglo-Norman nobility. Among the victims was Mathilde, wife of Count Rotrou III of Perche. Tradition relates that the inconsolable count had an oratory to the Virgin built around 1122 in memory of the departed, then in 1140 settled monks there from Le Breuil-Benoit, so that prayers might rise without end for the soul of his wife. The community joined the Cistercian order in 1147. After the ravages of the Hundred Years' War came its hour of glory: in 1664, the abbot Armand Jean de Rance, a former man of the world turned convert, imposed here a reform of total austerity — silence, manual labor, poverty. The monks of this Strict Observance came to be called 'Trappists,' recognized as an order by Rome in 1892: the name of this remote valley thus spread to every continent, from Belgian beers to American monasteries. Driven out at the Revolution, the monks returned in 1815 and rebuilt the abbey in neo-Gothic style in the 19th century. Around twenty Trappists still follow the Rule of Saint Benedict there, among ponds and forests, making fruit preserves and monastic products. The visitor does not cross the enclosure but may follow the offices, draw water from the Saint-Bernard fountain, and walk along the ponds — a landscape of silence, nine centuries after the shipwreck that gave it birth.

Getting there : 2 km east of the village of Soligny-la-Trappe, in a vale of ponds in the Perche. Coordinates given for the Saint-Bernard fountain, a spring open to the public at the entrance to the grounds; shop and exhibition open daily, monastic offices open to all, enclosure not open to visits (guided outdoor tours in season).

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

Ambient sound