Abbaye de Signy

Signy-l'Abbaye

On 25 March 1135, the feast of the Annunciation, a monk named Bernard, from the abbey of Notre-Dame d'Igny, arrived with twelve companions in a steep-sided valley of the Ardennes to found a new monastery there. The site was so rudimentary, so little prepared, that the monks first had to be lodged in the neighbouring hamlet of Draize while the first conventual buildings went up. Among the great figures who joined Signy was William of Saint-Thierry, the celebrated theologian and close friend of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who left the abbey of Saint-Thierry in 1135 to come and end his days here, and to rest here. For six hundred and fifty years the abbey flourished, even giving its name to the village that grew up in its shadow: Signy-l'Abbaye. But the French Revolution brought this history to a brutal end: sold as national property in 1793, the abbey was entirely demolished, its stones reused to build the neighbouring château de Montaubois, its library given over wholly to the flames. It took archaeological excavations in 1994 to find again, beneath the Ardennes meadows, the ground plan of the vanished buildings — silent traces of a monastery of which nothing remains above ground but the name, proudly borne by a whole village.

Getting there : Village of Signy-l'Abbaye, in the Ardennes, between Rethel and Charleville-Mézières

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

Ambient sound