history

History of the monument

From the time it was founded by Saint Louis in the 13th century to the present day, the Abbey of Royaumont was never abandoned. After the French Revolution it was converted into a cotton mill and then in 1869 into a noviciate by sisters who undertook the first major restoration work. At the beginning of the 20th century the abbey was acquired by the Goüin family, which set up the Royaumont Foundation (Fondation Goüin-Lang pour le Progrès des Sciences de l'Homme) in 1964; the abbey now belongs to the Royaumont Foundation.

	© Michel Chassat

The Abbey of Saint Louis

Saint Louis founded the Abbey of Royaumont in 1228 and stayed there many times; this was Royaumont's period of greatest renown. Monks lived there up until the Revolution but the community was very quickly reduced from 120 to about 20 and then 10 monks, while the buildings were abandoned. From the 16th century Royaumont was headed by a series of commendatory abbots, many of whom took a liking to it and made it their summer residence. The last abbot, Cornut de Ballivières, built a magnificent palace but never lived there because by the time it was completed in 1989 he had fled.

After the Revolution

The church of Royaumont was destroyed in 1792. The new owner of the Abbey, the Marquis of Travanet, used the stones of the church to build workers' quarters in the park for the cotton mill which he installed at Royaumont. While the old architecture was mistreated for the sake of the factory, a Romantic taste for old ruins and the social life of the new occupants attracted the Paris upper-crust bourgeoisie. In the second half of the 19th century, sisters from the Sainte Famille de Bordeaux undertook to restore the soul of the Abbey. Guided by the idea of rebuilding the original Gothic architecture and working for the glory of Saint Louis, they undertook extensive restoration work.

Royaumont in the 20th century

In the early 20th century the Abbey was acquired by the Goüin Family which set up the current cultural centre. In 1964, Henry and Isabel Goüin created the Royaumont Foundation (Fondation Goüin-Lang pour le Progrès des Sciences de l'Homme), the first private French cultural foundation.