Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque — Attraction in Apt

The price is outrageously high for what this abbey is. €7.50 for a 30-minute visit is honestly too much.

The main problem, however, is that I would not recommend it even if it were free, as I'm not sure if it's worth wasting 30 minutes of your life. The visit can be summarized as three empty rooms with no decoration, no furniture, no pictures—literally nothing besides four stone walls and a roof (which is not particularly remarkable). There is an okay cloister and a church that is okay at best. In France, you can easily see better ones by going literally anywhere. To make matters worse, the church is a huge construction site, so it's largely inaccessible and full of scaffolding and the like.

The HistoPad is full of useless and very boring information and it doesn't add anything to the history of the place. It's mostly a "toy" for kids. Don't rely on it if you want to understand the story of the place.

The shop contains the usual "tourist crap." There are a lot of abbey beers. Almost none of them is French; they are basically all Belgian. Senanque is not even a brewery nor a Trappist abbey (which are famous for beers), so I honestly don't understand why on Earth someone would ever buy a Belgian, mass-produced, and widely available supermarket beer (like Chimay) in an overpriced shop, at an abbey, in France. It makes literally zero sense, unless you like to be robbed (which is also a prerequisite to visit this place, as I learned the hard way).

The only saving grace is the garden, with the lavender. You can find lavender in many other places, so it is not a huge deal, but the combo of the abbey and lavender field is honestly pretty nice.

Finally, the parking lot is abysmal. It is big enough so I can't complain about this, but it is very tight, and you enter and exit from the same way. There is space for only one car at a time, so it is often very cumbersome to use.

EDIT: to add context to the shop, after the response from the Abbey. In the shop they sell Achel Brew, and they say that is a monastic beer. They also (interectly) confirm that all their products are made by monk. Achel beer stopped being run by monks in 2023, as it was purchased by a belgian entrepreneur and the last monks went to Westmalle. Indeed Achel is not a trappist brewery anymore, as you can easily check by...

Whilst it says "accessible entrance", that's about the limit of what is accessible with wheels. You can't access any of the bits you'd actually want to see if you're in a wheelchair or have kids that need a pushchair. This should really be a bit clearer - whilst old buildings often have accessibility challenges due to their historical nature, the visitable parts of the abbey are up an entire flight of stairs and to get between the various parts of the tour it requires going up and down maybe a dozen steps at a time (if it had been a handful of steps you could have carried a buggy). Anyway, not to complain about the structure itself - just that this needs to be made much clearer: don't go there if you need wheels or find stairs problematic.

On a positive point, the histopad was genuinely very interesting and clever - it even allowed us to see what the inside of the church would look like if it wasn't currently a building site. It's interesting to see it as a building site, but again, it would have been nice to have a heads up that the entire outside of the building is covered in scaffolding (so no nice photos of the lavender and abbey) and the inside of the church is a building site - although the dormitory, cloisters and underground rooms are all in good shape, and the cloister garden was beautiful.

I would love to come again once the building work is finished and when my baby is a bit older and can walk herself rather than needing to be carried around. It really does look like it would be a lovely place and I did get a bit of a feel for that today - just would have been good to know about the accessibility and building works in advance, as we might have...

It seems that most people come to the Abbey just to see the lavender fields and not to go into the Abbey for the paid tour. If you decide to pay to go in the Abbey there is a dress code which is perfectly understandable as it’s a functioning religious centre. It’s no short shorts or skirts, no vests that show shoulders. The dress code is not clear on their website but there are signs on the footpath to the entrance. We arrived on a busy Sunday. Lots of cars and a few coaches were parked on the narrow main road and the approach road to the Abbey. However there were lots of free car parking at the actual entrance to the Abbey. As we left there was total chaos on the main road. Cars had parked on both sides of the road and coaches were stuck as they could not get through. To get out we had to go in the opposite direction. I read comments in which some complained that they couldn’t walk through the lavender fields as they were fenced off. It’s clear why they are fenced off. There are a couple of small areas of lavender that you can walk through and photograph. But we saw people picking significant amounts and walking over it causing damage. There are lots of opportunities to take photographs without paying to gain entry. We paid online to enter the Abbey. Make sure you download your e-tickets before as there is no mobile phone signal. The tour with the device took around 30 minutes. It’s okay lots of supportive information. We had to navigate around a large group with a guide. There is a large shop. No cafe but there is are drink and sweets vending machines at the...