Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud — Attraction in Saumur

Founded in 1100, the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud (Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud) is now a museum and cultural center. The beautifully restored abbey complex includes a Romanesque abbey church with royal tombs, a lovely Renaissance cloister and a fascinating Byzantine-Romanesque kitchen.

The best views of the abbey are from the east, where extensive terraced gardens rise behind the chevet of the church and the Saint-Benoit infirmaries.

The abbey church (1105-60) at Fontevraud is impressive but austere, lacking the usual warmth and intimacy of Romanesque churches because of the 19th-century destruction and heavy restoration. The church was built in a combination of Romanesque regional styles. The chancel and transept were built first in a typical Loire Valley style, with radiating chapels at the east end, while the slightly later nave reflects the influence of southwest France, topped with four cupolas on pendentives. Carved capitals in the nave, also in the southwest style, depict animals, plants, and biblical scenes.

The main attraction of the abbey church is a fenced-off area near the front of the nave, which contains four royal effigy tombs dating from the 12th and 13th centuries. Each one is topped with a painted effigy of its occupant. The remains of the royals are no longer in the tombs, and were probably destroyed at...

Really enjoyed the abbey and its grounds. The tombs of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard the Lion Heart are on display in the abbey itself. You can also visit the crypt - not much to see but you can see where the excavations took place and there's a short video with English subtitles that tells the story of archaeological research in a light-hearted way. There's plenty to see in the rest of the buildings - information shown English and French - telling the story of abbey life, how it changed over time and then its role as a prison. The separate kitchen building is a little disappointing as there's nothing in it - I'd have loved to have seen it as a reconstructive medieval kitchen, or something similar. There garden are nice to wander around and some massive church bells placed in the garden that you can actually bong yourself! It's impossible to resist bonging them, tbh. Nice cafe with inside and outside seating. If you like a history building, you'll enjoy this. If you have young children, it's big enough that they can run around while you look at the historic stuff. And then they can ring the bells in the garden. We visited in August and didn't need to queue or buy...

Luckily my wife had already visited the Abbey, because as it turns out, the employees at this sight have a particular way of reading their own website.

The conversation at the ticket office was rather "Trumpian" for us. Apparently they close the sales "une heure et demi" before closing hours. I speak both French and English, but to make it easier, I thought I'd let her explain how the French 1,5 translates to 1 in English. Well, turns out it's all logical, because the closing hour is 17:45, so at 16:55 it is too late to buy a ticket (uhmmm...). Numbers in French work a bit differently than in English (obviously), and I must have been asleep at school when they thaught us to translate an English schedule which states "closes at 18:00" to a French one...

Now, to be honest... she did want to allow us in eventually, even though the register "does not allow selling tickets after 17:00". It's now 17:05 and these must be "smart systems", so I think she was offering to let us in for free?

From what I hear it must be nice, so 2 stars. Too bad I heard some sweet "mentir" ("Trump talk"). Get that image out to your international tourists, I'm sure it will make for wonderful...