A stone’s throw from Chantilly, the Royal Abbey of Chaalis has kept its secrets hidden for a very long time. An investment plan and new management will awaken this sleeping beauty.
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…
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