In 910, William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, founded an abbey under the patronage of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, accountable directly to the Pope. The abbey grew considerably until the 12th century thanks to abbots like Odilo and Hugh of Semur, who were later canonised.
Cluny was the mother house for over 1,000 monasteries and became the headquarters of the largest monastic order in the West: the Cluniac order.
And that is where we wandered today.
Bourgogne is confusing me. There is so much here. You drive 6kms and you feel you have arrived in another country ... sometimes, another time. And we have driven so many kilometres, slowly, wandering through time and space in ways I'm not sure I've traveled before.
Cluny Abbey was a Benedictine Monastery that played a hugely influential role throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It had the highest arches in the Roman world and was the biggest church in Christianity.
Sadly French revolutionaries destroyed this incredible site in 1790. Still, it was a pleasure to wander there, learning of its history, enjoying what had survived and/or been restored.
I turned a corner searching for the 3D film room they promised us and found the corridor below there in front of me. This is simply a snapshot but I love that it captured something of the beauty that is still the Cluny Abbey.
