Abbaye Notre-Dame des Neiges

Saint-Laurent-les-Bains-Laval-d'Aurelle

On 5 August 1850, the feast of Notre-Dame des Neiges, seven brothers left the abbey of Aiguebelle for a farm of stone and thatch in the Ardèche mountains, La Felgère. Postulants flocked in, and a new monastery rose from 1854. On 26 September 1878, the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson spent a night there with his she-donkey Modestine; he made it a chapter of his Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. On 16 January 1890, the viscount Charles de Foucauld entered there and took the habit under the name brother Marie-Albéric, before leaving for Syria in June. On the night of 27 to 28 January 1912, a fire destroyed the monastery, which was immediately rebuilt. From 1949 to the early 2000s, the monks lived from the wine they produced. In December 2021, the last six brothers decided to leave; they left the premises in September 2022. On 1 December 2022, eight Cistercian nuns from Boulaur, in the Gers, took over the monastery. There were thirteen of them in 2025, and their house became an autonomous priory on 28 December 2025.

Abbaye Notre-Dame des Neiges — Histoire ↗

Getting there: From Saint-Laurent-les-Bains by the D4a; church, shop and guesthouse of the nuns open; stage on the Stevenson trail (GR 70).

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

Ambient sound