During the production for the 1968 film, The Lion in Winter that featured the abbey, Katharine Hepburn's dressing room was accommodated in the basement.

Until the late Middle Ages, Montmajour was an island, 43 meters above the surrounding terrain, protected by marshes and accessible only by boat.

Inside the church a passage leads to what appears to be a natural cave, with a small window, which according to tradition was the home of St. Trophimus and the first monks to live on the island.

The rocky slope near St. Peter's Chapel has more than a dozen tombs cut into the rock in the shape of human bodies, with places for the head, shoulders and feet.

It is located a few hundred meters from the abbey church, outside the monastery walls, to provide the monks with greater separation from the crowds of pilgrims.

On its outer side, the ambulatory opens into five radiating chapels, each with its own window catching the eastern light, and its own small barrel-vaulted choir bay and semi-domed apse.

The nave is covered with slightly pointed barrel vaults supported by projecting traverse arches resting upon cruciform piers.

There are three doorways on the south side of the church; one leading to the rock cemetery, one to abbot's lodging (now ruined); and one to the chapter house and the spiral stairway to the bell tower.

The west gallery was extensively altered by the Maurist monks in the 18th century, but the brackets have some of the most vivid carvings, showing the Mistral wind, the moon, the sun and fire, and a mythical amphibious beast devouring a man.

The south gallery is the most recent, and the carvings are the most realistic; a donkey, a monkey, a camel and an eagle are depicted on the brackets, and the columns show the Annunciation the crowning of the Virgin, and knights fighting.

The tower was built by the abbot and cardinal, Pons de l'Orme, beginning in 1369 to protect the abbey from the rampaging Free Company (see chronology.)

The top is equipped with battlements, arrow slits and machicolation, designed to drop unpleasant things on the heads of attackers.

The ruined Maurist Monastery was built in the classical style by architect Pierre Mignard on a huge scale; the building was originally five stories high, covering eight thousand square meters, with sixty windows and two grand staircases.

The painter Vincent van Gogh, who lived in nearby Arles, frequently painted and drew the Abbey and the landscape around it.

He wrote on July 5, 1888: "Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath, where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill, and wheat fields in the valley.