Gellone Monastery

The abbey church (9th – 11th century)

With its slender proportions, the abbey church is one of the most successful examples of medieval Romanesque architecture. The interior architecture of the church is characterised by an absence of decoration and pure, clean lines.
Excavations carried out in the 1960s by the French Historic Monuments commission revealed the presence of a crypt, a vestige of the Carolingian church.

Treasures

• The reliquaries of Saint William of Gellone and the True Cross.
• The altar of William of Gellone (12th century), an exceptional piece of liturgical furniture made of black and white marble and inlaid with coloured glass.

The historic 18th century organ

this remarkable instrument was built in 1782 by Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, the grandfather of the distinguished organ maker Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who was born in Montpellier in 1811.
A prestigious season of musical events has been organised each summer for the last 30 years, and welcomes great artists who offer their own interpretations of old masterpieces.

The cloister

sold as national assets at the time of the Revolution, the buildings were turned into a cotton mill and tannery and then severely weakened by the terrible flooding when the Verdus broke its banks in 1817. Long neglected and threatened with ruin, the stones of the cloister were taken to be used in building work in the village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert and the surrounding area.

Many of the cloister's sculptures, however (almost 150 items), were acquired by Pierre Yon Vernière, a justice of the peace in Aniane. In 1905 the collection was sold to the American architect Georges Grey Barnard and shipped to the United States, where today it is one of the jewels in the crown of the famous Cloisters Museum in New York City.

The Abbey Stone Collection

numerous stone items are stored here in the former monks' refectory, including capitals with floral decoration, columns carved in a wave pattern, abacuses, archstones, statues, sarcophagi and more.


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