FROM AN ABBEY CHERISHED BY KINGS / TO ONE OF THE MOST FEARED PRISONS
The 13 hectares over which the various buildings are spread, today teeming with life (artists, visitors, conference attendees), illustrate the importance of an Abbey that was directly attached to royalty. The reclining effigies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, of her husband Henry 2nd and of their son Richard the Lionheart, seen in the Abbey Church, are a reminder of this glorious past. To stroll along the cloister, to visit the chapter house or the kitchens of the Royal Abbey, gives an understanding of the daily lives of the nuns who lived here. Not forgetting its later incarnation, in the 19th century, as one of the toughest prisons in France …