Abbaye Saint-Corneille de Compiègne

Compiègne

Charles the Bald wanted at Compiègne what his grandfather Charlemagne had at Aachen: a palace and its chapel, a place in which to hold himself as king. Around 876-877 he founded a palatine church dedicated to the Virgin, endowed with a hundred canons, which then took the name of Saint Cornelius, whose relics it received; it also kept a venerated shroud and a veil of the Virgin, which long drew pilgrims. In the very year of the founder's death, in 877, Hincmar of Reims crowned there his son Louis the Stammerer: it is the same archbishop who, at the same date, was completing his Life of Saint Remigius and fixing there for ever the legend of the dove and the Holy Ampulla. Odo was crowned there in 888, Louis V in 979, and it was at Senlis, not here, that an assembly recognised Hugh Capet in 987, before his coronation at Noyon. Then Reims prevailed, and the abbey became again a house of monks among others. The church was demolished in 1822; there remain the 13th-century cloister, the bases of a bell tower and a wall with gargoyles, in the middle of a town that has kept the memory of its kings.

Wikipédia — Abbaye Saint-Corneille de Compiègne ↗

Getting there : Right in the centre of Compiègne, ten minutes' walk from the station. The cloister and the buildings house a municipal library: free access during opening hours, guided tours of the cloister on the heritage days. A stretch of the abbey wall, with two gargoyles, can be seen from the place du Marché-aux-Herbes.

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

Ambient sound