Abbaye de Fontfroide

Fontfroide Abbey is one of the best-preserved Cistercian monastic complexes in southern France, tucked into a quiet valley at the edge of the Corbières hills about 15 kilometres southwest of Narbonne in Occitania. Founded in 1093 as a Benedictine house under the Latin name Fons Frigidus, it was absorbed into the Cistercian order around 1145 and grew into one of the most influential abbeys in the Languedoc during the 12th and 13th centuries. Its ties to the Albigensian Crusade are direct: the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau, whose assassination in 1208 triggered the crusade against the Cathars, had close connections to Fontfroide. The Romanesque cloisters with their paired columns, the abbey church, and the rose gardens are today classified as a French historic monument and open to guided visits.