Abbaye de Cluny

A true "beacon of the West" in the Middle Ages, Cluny Abbey was the intellectual heart of a monastic empire stretching across Europe. Founded in 910, it housed the largest church in Christendom (the Maior Ecclesia) until the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Although dismantled after the French Revolution, the remaining vestiges—notably the great south transept arm and its holy water tower—are enough to inspire awe and bear witness to the immense power of the abbots of Cluny, who answered only to the Pope. A visit is a fascinating archaeological investigation in the heart of Burgundy. Visitors will discover exquisitely sculpted capitals, masterpieces of Romanesque art, as well as the vast complex of 18th-century convent buildings surrounding the medieval ruins. The site is striking in its duality: on one side, the intact splendor of the abbot's palace and the classical cloister; on the other, the colossal fragments of the vanished church which force the imagination to reconstruct what was, for centuries, the spiritual center of the known world.