Abbaye Notre-Dame du Miroir

Le Miroir

In 1131, the lord Humbert de Coligny gave these lands in Bresse to the monks of Cîteaux, who founded there the abbey of Notre-Dame du Miroir, the eleventh direct daughter house of the mother house. For more than six centuries, the community shaped the surrounding landscape, draining the ponds and farming the land of Bresse. Like so many other monasteries, it suffered the backlash of the Revolution: the conventual buildings were razed, scattering for ever the cloister and the monks' quarters. Only the abbey church escaped destruction, converted into the parish church of the village that still bears its name. Precious relics of this history can be discovered there today: a three-seated abbatial throne of the 16th century, listed as a historic monument, several finely carved 14th-century funerary effigies, and a stained-glass window of 1902 by the Lyon master glazier Lucien Bégule, telling in pictures the epic of the vanished abbey. To enter this modest church is thus to step into the last sanctuary of a great Cistercian monastery whose memory lingers, diffuse, across the whole of Bresse.

Getting there : In the very heart of the village of Le Miroir, in Burgundian Bresse, reached by the D2 between Louhans and Cuiseaux

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

Ambient sound