The Loire Valley is famous for its many gorgeous châteaux, but after a few days of hopping from one château to the next, you start to feel a bit of fatigue (château fatigue, if you will). To avoid that, I highly recommend mixing in something a little different between châteaux. Fontevraud Abbey is exactly the kind of break you’ll need while making your way from one château to another, but in my opinion, it’s a site worth visiting on its own merits too, thanks to the fascinating stories attached to it.
The story of Fontevraud Abbey
In the year 1100, the preacher Robert d’Arbrissel (c. 1045-1116) arrived with a group of his followers at a place called Fons Ebraldi (roughly translated from Latin as “the springs of Ebrald”) and decided to settle there with his followers and found an abbey, which was named after the place. Over the years, the Latin “Fons Ebraldi” evolved into the French name with a similar meaning, “Fontevraud.” From its very first day, the abbey was unusual in that it housed both men and women (at first together, and later, under pressure from the leaders of the Catholic Church, separately). But there was something else unique about it. For about 600 years, the person who ruled over both the male and female populations of the abbey was its abbess.
The abbey’s reputation spread far and wide, and it became a favored institution of the Plantagenet dynasty, which ruled Anjou and, later, England and large parts of territory that today form part of modern France. As a result, two kings of this dynasty, Henry II (r. 1154-1189) and Richard I (r. 1189-1199), known as “the Lionheart,” are buried here, along with Isabella of Angoulême (c. 1188-1246) (wife of King John, r. 1199-1216, known as “John Lackland”) and Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), the only woman to be both queen of France, as the wife of Louis VII (r. 1137-1180), and queen of England, as the wife of Henry II. In the early 13th century, the territory came under the rule of the king of France, but the abbey continued to enjoy great prestige (despite no shortage of financial troubles), and for centuries afterward it was led by abbesses from the most important noble families in France. The best known of these abbesses was Marie-Madeleine de Rochechouart (1650-1704), the younger sister of the beloved mistress of the marquise de Montespan, who was herself the mistress of Louis XIV. She was given the leadership of the abbey by the king at just 20 years old, and he had to bend the rules a bit to make that happen, since according to the abbey’s statutes, an abbess had to be at least 30. Marie-Madeleine received the abbey not just thanks to her good looks, but mainly because of her remarkable command of languages and her passion for philosophy and theology. During her time, Fontevraud became a kind of cultural center where, alongside religious studies, they staged the plays of Racine and read the Iliad, part of which she herself translated.
Following the French Revolution, the abbey’s population was dispersed, and for years the place sat abandoned. Napoleon decided to turn the abbey into a prison in 1804, and several additional buildings were added to the original structures to hold the inmates. Fontevraud’s prison was considered one of the harshest in France, and prisoners were forced to do hard labor for most of the day. Inmates were forbidden from speaking to each other during most of the day, and violations were punished severely. Between 1804 and 1963, when the prison finally closed, thousands of prisoners passed through it. The most famous of them was the writer Jean Genet (1910-1986), who wrote the 1946 novel “Miracle of the Rose” (Le Miracle de la Rose), based on his experiences at the Fontevraud prison. After the prison closed, it was decided to preserve the buildings for their historical importance and to turn the complex into a museum and cultural center that now hosts concerts.
Visiting the museum
As you probably know, one of the defining features of a nun’s vow is a life of poverty and modesty. While that probably didn’t bother the nuns themselves much, it does create a bit of a problem when you turn a place like this into a museum. How do you convince the average tourist to pay around 10 euros for admission when relatively few works of art remain inside the abbey? This is where multimedia has come to the rescue in recent years, to the delight of both tourists and the organization that runs the museum. So as you move between the abbey’s rooms and the church, you can discover the history of the abbey and the prison through animated videos, interactive programs (one of which lets you “scribble” on the church walls to understand how fresco painting works), and a series of video interviews with guards who worked at the Fontevraud prison, which you can watch inside small cell-like spaces where prisoners once met with visitors. After a few hours of relaxed exploring, you’ll come away realizing that the difference between an abbey and a prison isn’t really so big, and that, in a way, most people end up living in some kind of prison of their own free will. The place is very tourist-friendly and offers material in both English and French, so you’re guaranteed a first-class visitor experience. So if you find yourself in the western part of the Loire Valley, near the towns of Angers or Chinon, I highly recommend setting aside a few hours for this place and enjoying a truly unique experience.
Nights at Fontevraud
If you ask me when’s the best time to visit Fontevraud, my answer is September. Why? Because that month, Fontevraud turns into a kind of stage for multimedia, music, and culinary events, and hosts the FESTIVINI festival.
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