Founded in 1115 in a remote place of southern Champagne, the abbey of Clairvaux was found in just over a century, thanks to the personality of St.Bernard, at the head of a filiation of more than three hundred houses applying the Cistercian reform. This influence is reflected in successive reconstructions of ever more imposing buildings, up to the great cloister of the eighteenth century. The Revolution dispersed the monks and the purchase of the site by the State in 1808 saved the buildings of the former abbey, with the exception of the church, by installing the largest detention house in France. This site, so full of history, where the prison function is in the process of ending, is today both a high place of the Cistercian world and an important testimony of confinement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Access
A5 sortie 23 - D619 Chaumont-Bar/Aube.
Website
http://www.abbayedeclairvaux.com/
Phone
03 25 27 52 55

Address
Bourg, 10310 Ville-sous-la-Ferté, Aube, Grand Est, France