St Guilhem-le-Desert

Saint Guilhem-le-Desert. Image by Fritz Geller-Grimm, 30.5.2006, published under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license

Saint Guilhem-le-Desert is a mediaeval village located at the point where the Gellone Valley meets the River Herault and thus provides a pass through the Celette montains.

The village, which is largely unspoilt, has been officially designated one of the most beautiful villages in France.

The village is on the route of the Chemin Saint Jacques which ultimately leads to the pilgrim destination of Santiago de Compostuela.

The village owes its name to William (Guillaume) of Aquitaine, a grandson of the Frankish King Charles Mantel and a military commander under Charlemagne, who retired there after acquiring a religious vocation.

William, who died in 812 AD, founded the village's abbey, now known as the Abbey of Saint Guilhem, on a ravine above the River Herault.

The abbey prospered thanks to a fragment of wood purportedly from the True Cross presented to William by Charlemagne. This relic attracted numerous pilgrims and effectively financed the eleventh century reconstruction of the abbey.

The abbey of Saint Guilhem-le-Desert with its distinctive central apse. Image by Fritz Geller-Grimm, 30.5.2006, published under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license

The abbey, a fine example of Romanesque mediaeval architecture, bares few traces of the  original ninth century structure.

The abbey church possesses a single nave which terminates in a large well-lit central apse. The nave is separated from two side aisles by a double-arched colonnade which supports a barrel-vaulted ceiling.The apsidal chapels, highly visible from the village below, are a prominent local landmark.

In 1569, the abbey was sacked by Protestants during the French religious wars. It then fell into a state of decay until taken over by the Congregation of Saint Maur, a sect of Benedictine monks.

Six such monks, who managed a tannery and spinning mill, were still living in the abbey at the time of the French Revolution.

The abbey, proclaimed a historic monument in 1840, was extensively restored during the second half of the nineteenth century.

However, large sections of the cloisters were dismantled and sold to the New York Museum of Metropolitan Art in 1905. They are now exhibited in the museum's external annex named the "Cloisters". Only the northern and part of the western sections remain in situ.

The remaining cloisters of the abbey of Saint Guilhem-le-Desert. Image by Fritz Geller-Grimm, 30.5.2006, published under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license

The missing cloisters reassembled in New York. Image published under the GNU Free Documentation License, verison 1.2 or later

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