Chartreuse de Mélan, le monastère des moniales de Béatrice de Faucigny

Taninges

Béatrice de Faucigny, lady of Faucigny and dauphine of Viennois by her marriage, lost her son Jean, who died from a fall from a horse; in 1282 she decided to found a monastery to receive his remains and entrusted it to Carthusian nuns. The first nuns arrived in June 1288, before the works were finished; the church was consecrated in 1290 and the dauphin's body was transferred there from the abbey of Sixt. It is a Gothic church with a single nave of five bays, which two chapels enlarged in 1345 and, on the south side, in 1374, on the foundation of Count Amadeus VI of Savoy. Planned for some sixty nuns, the house sheltered around forty; a fire in 1528 led to the cloister being rebuilt in Flamboyant Gothic. After five centuries, the Revolution, which reached Savoy in 1792, drove out the forty nuns and their seven priests in 1793, and the monastery was sold. From 1803 it became a school, then a minor seminary, where the Jesuits taught from 1833 to 1848; the département of Haute-Savoie bought it in 1906 and set up a children's home there, then an orphanage in 1923. In 1967 a fire destroyed the greater part of the buildings and cost the lives of eighteen children; the church and the cloister, spared, have been restored. The département now presents exhibitions there and, in the park, some ten monumental sculptures.

Wikipédia — Chartreuse de Mélan ↗

Getting there : Avenue de Mélan, in Taninges, on the Samoëns road; by the A40 motorway, Cluses exit. A site of the département of Haute-Savoie, open every day from 1 April to 31 October, admission free (to be checked); free guided tours by the site's mediators by reservation, and historical tours by the Guides du patrimoine for a small charge (to be checked). The sculpture park, freely accessible all year round, extends the visit along the river.

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

Ambient sound