38 rue Saint-Jean de l'Habit, Maine-et-Loire
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The first thing guests notice in their room at Fontevraud L'Ermitage is the headboard: a padded linen hood hanging over the pillows, like a monk who has nodded off on duty. It is a gentle joke about where they are sleeping. The hotel fills the old Saint-Lazare priory, inside the walls of the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud near Saumur, a medieval monastic town so large that it is perfectly possible to get lost on the way to dinner.
The monks, it should be said, never had much say here. The preacher who founded Fontevraud put a woman in charge, and for seven centuries the abbess ran the place, monks included, while they did as they were told. Kings were welcome too, provided they were dead. The Plantagenets chose the abbey church as their family vault, and Eleanor of Aquitaine still lies there beside them.
The abbey's next career was a good deal less serene. After the Revolution it became one of the toughest prisons in France and stayed that way for a century and a half. Guests today are confined only by choice, behind walls thick enough to keep a neighbour's snoring firmly in the Middle Ages, and the rations have improved: there is honey from the abbey's own hives by the bed, along with water from its spring.
As evening falls, the old chapel fills with the soft pop of corks, because the bar beneath its Gothic arches specialises in the sparkling wines of Saumur. The abbess would have had views. Dinner is served around a small cloister planted with herbs, where Thibaut Ruggeri cooks with enough nerve to have put a radish sorbet on the menu and got away with it.
The real treat comes after dark. When the gates close on the last tourists, guests can wander among the floodlit buildings with only the owls for company, and in the abbey church Eleanor lies on her tomb with an open book in her hands, as she has for some eight hundred years. She shows no sign of finishing it.
This is a stay for the curious, and families tend to love it, since there are cloisters to explore and a museum of modern art for a rainy day. Most guests arrive by car from Saumur, about twenty minutes away, and the bill is refreshingly modest for a night in a royal abbey. Neither pool nor spa is on offer, so the closest thing to a treatment is the silence.
Breakfast is served round the cloister, and by then the hood above the bed has done its job. The monks who wore the real thing were up before dawn on the abbess's orders. Their successors answer to nobody and are welcome to sleep in.
Room key
Entry to the Royal Abbey comes with the room, and for hotel guests the abbey stays open late into the night. The Museum of Modern Art in the same walls needs its own ticket.
Every piece of furniture was drawn for the hotel by Patrick Jouin and Sangit Manku, down to the stool and the wastepaper basket, in solid oak with wool carpet. The tall upholstered headboard leans forward at an angle chosen for reading in bed, and 22-centimetre partitions keep neighbours out of earshot. The Emotion rooms add high ceilings and a view of the orchard.
The restaurant sets its tables in a cloister gallery around a small planted garth, with a chapter-house dining room for cooler evenings. Thibaut Ruggeri's menu follows a 5,000 m² organic kitchen garden on the abbey site, and the honey comes from the abbey's own hives. The wine list gives a place to the sparkling wines of the Saumur area.
Eleanor of Aquitaine chose the abbey church as the burial place of the English royal line, and four painted effigies lie in its nave: Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, Eleanor herself and Isabella of Angoulême. The church stands across the abbey grounds from the priory. Entry is included in the stay, so the tombs can be seen twice, by daylight and late at night.
The ticket office closes, but for hotel guests the Royal Abbey stays open late into the night. The great cloister, the chapter house and the Romanesque kitchens are then lit and nearly empty. A private guide can be booked for the evening to tell the story of Eleanor, Richard and the abbesses; otherwise the walk from the priory and back is unaccompanied.
At a glance
Where
38 rue Saint-Jean de l'Habit, 49590 Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, Maine-et-Loire, in the Saint-Lazare priory inside the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, a UNESCO World Heritage site. By car: Saumur 15 minutes, Tours 55 minutes, Angers 1 hour, Nantes 1 hour 55, Paris 3 hours 15. Buses from Saumur station on the Ogalo network; nearest airports Tours Val de Loire and Nantes Atlantique
Why this one
Hotel guests keep it until late.
Or on the terrace in summer.
Furniture by Jouin Manku.
The Edit Notes
The thick walls of the Saint-Lazare priory are the hotel's cooling system, and the official room sheets list every category as non-air-conditioned except the Garden room. That room is on the garden level of the Liban pavilion, faces due east and has its own terrace. For a stay in July or August, or for anyone who sleeps badly in warm rooms, it is the category to ask for. The rest of the year the difference hardly matters.
The restaurant closes on Monday and Tuesday and serves lunch only at weekends. A Monday or Tuesday night is not lost, because Le Panier de L'Ermite, a supper basket eaten in the hotel gardens, is offered every evening by reservation, but it is a picnic rather than a dinner by the cloister. Anyone coming for Thibaut Ruggeri's cooking should book a Wednesday to Sunday night and reserve the table along with the room.
The Family duplex in the Liban pavilion is the one category built for four: a double bed on a mezzanine with its own shower room, and below, under a cathedral ceiling, a living room with two sofa beds in an alcove and a separate toilet. It opens easily onto the gardens. Comfort and Emotion rooms can take an extra child's bed on request, while the Classic room is for one person only, with a 140 cm bed.
Abbey entry is included in the stay, and for hotel guests the gates stay open late into the night, long after the ticket office has closed. The best plan is to visit the Museum of Modern Art in the daytime, since its ticket is separate and it keeps normal hours, and to leave the church, the Plantagenet tombs and the great cloister for after dinner. The hotel also arranges private guided tours by appointment, booked several days ahead.
The price question
The money buys a night inside a monument: the abbey to walk in once it has emptied, breakfast in a cloister and rooms designed to the last wastepaper basket. It does not buy space or indulgence. Most rooms measure around 20 m², all but one category lack air-conditioning, and there is no pool or spa. The comparison is with a château hotel nearby, with more room and fewer centuries.
Book it for one or two nights on a Loire trip, with the restaurant table booked with the room and the abbey kept for after dark. A family of four fits in the duplex. Anyone who wants to spend a day by a pool or in a spa is better placed at a château hotel elsewhere in the valley.
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Les Sources de Cheverny
An estate between Chambord and Chenonceau where a period château, a hamlet of cabins, a lake and stone houses sit among forest and vineyards, with a Spa by Caudalie.
The Extra Edit
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