Big Plans for Chaalis, the Sistine Chapel of the Oise

Founded as an ephemeral Benedictine priory in 1100, the Royal Abbey of Chaalis has everything it takes to become a major heritage site: the Romantic ruins of a Cistercian Abbey that ranked among the richest of its time under the royal patronage de Louis VI, the Fat (r. 1108-1137); a chapel boasting one of France’s only remaining Renaissance frescoes; a thousand hectares (more than 2 thousand acres) of woodland, French and English-style gardens, an arboretum and a rose garden; and paintings amassed by Nélie Jacquemart, an insatiable collector with eclectic tastes as well as a little-known painter whose influential husband ranked among France’s richest men in the 19th-century. Yet very few people other than researchers know about the site. This fact did not escape the Cour des comptes (editor’s note: the French body that oversees public spending), which in July criticized how the Institut de France, the abbey’s owner, runs the place: “A lack of means or attention… has left [Chaalis] in a state of abandonment for several decades… [There is] little work, no scientific policy, insufficient maintenance, restoration…