Sénanque Abbey

The young community found patrons in the seigneurs of Simiane, whose support enabled them to build the abbey church, consecrated in 1178.

Among its existing structures, famed examples of Romanesque architecture, are the abbey church, cloister, dormitory, chapter house and the small calefactory, the one heated space in the austere surroundings, so that the monks could write, for this was their scriptorium.

A refectory was added in the 17th century, when some minimal rebuilding of existing walls was undertaken, but the abbey is a remarkably untouched survival, of rare beauty and severity: the capitals of the paired columns in the cloister arcades are reduced to the simplest leaf forms, not to offer sensual distraction.

Somewhat unusually, its liturgical east end faces north, as the narrow and secluded valley offered no space for the conventional arrangement.

The monks who live at Sénanque grow lavender (visible in front of the abbey, illustration, right) and tend honey bees for their livelihood.