Six kilometres east of the small industrial town of Montbard, and accessible from the GR213 footpath, is the privately owned Abbey of Fontenay (daily: April–June & Sept to mid-Nov guided tours hourly 10am–noon & 2–5pm; July & Aug guided tours hourly 10am–noon & every half-hour 2–5pm; mid-Nov to March free visit 10am–noon & 2–5pm; €7.50). Founded in 1118, it's the only Burgundian monastery to survive intact, despite conversion to a paper mill in the early nineteenth century. It was restored earlier this century to its original form and is one of the most complete monastic complexes anywhere, comprising caretaker's lodge, guesthouse and chapel, dormitory, hospital, prison, bakery, kennels, dovecote and abbot's house, as well as a church, cloister, chapterhouse and even a forge.On top of all this, the abbey's physical setting, at the head of a quiet stream-filled valley enclosed by woods of pine, fir, sycamore and beech, is superb. There's a bucolic calm about the place, particularly in the graceful cloister, and in these surroundings the spartan simplicity of Cistercian life seems utterly attractive. Hardly a scrap of decoration softens the church: even the carving on the capitals is reduced to the barest-bones outline of an acanthus leaf – the motherly statue of the Virgin arrived after St Bernard's death. There's no direct lighting in the nave, just an other-worldly glow from the square-ended apse. The effect is beautiful but daunting, the perfect structural embodiment of St Bernard's ascetic principles.
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