Fontenay Abbey

Fontenay Abbey, near Montbard in the Côte-d'Or department of France, is a Cistercian monastery founded in 1118 by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and is considered one of the oldest and most complete Cistercian abbeys surviving in Europe. Its church was consecrated in 1147 by Pope Eugene III, and the community grew to house roughly three hundred monks by 1200; King Louis IX exempted the abbey from taxation in 1259, and it was raised to royal abbey status in 1269. The monks left during the French Revolution between 1789 and 1791, after which the site was converted into a paper mill run by the Montgolfier family, and it remained in industrial use until the art collector Edouard Aynard purchased and restored it beginning in 1906, completing the work by 1911. UNESCO designated Fontenay a World Heritage Site in 1981, and nearly all of its original monastic buildings survive intact, including the church, cloister, dormitory, and chapter house, with only the refectory lost; the abbey remains private property of the Aynard family, open to visitors.