Stavelot - Abbaye de Stavelot

The town of Stavalot grew around the "Abbey of Stavelot", founded in 648 by St. Remaclus, the abbot of the Abbey of Solignac (near Limoge) on behalf of the Merovingian king Sigebert III (aka "Saint Sigebert of Austrasia").

After the abbey had been raided twice by the Normans, it was a center of the Cluniac Reforms around 1000. The abbey existed upto the French Revolution, when the monks were expelled, the was pillaged by the revolutionaries and then sold and demolished.

The abbey´s treasures by now are squattered over the globe. The "Stavelot Bible", an illuminated manuscript from the 10th century, is in London, other masterpieces are in museums of New York, Berlin, Frankfurt and Paris.

Seen here are the foundations of the medieval abbey church. The former abbey buildings behind now host a museum.