Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert

Guilhem, a count and companion of Charlemagne, retired here in 804 to found a monastery in what the sources call a desert, meaning a wild and waterless place, and the abbey of Gellone grew around a relic of the True Cross given by the emperor. The Romanesque church survives largely intact. The cloister does not: after the Revolution its carved columns and capitals were sold as building material, and a large part was eventually bought by the sculptor George Grey Barnard and shipped to New York, where they form a core of the Cloisters museum. The village sits in the Gorges de l'Herault beside the Pont du Diable.

History

In 804 Saint Guillaume, Count of Toulouse and Duke of Aquitaine, founded an abbey here in a valley then almost uninhabited, hence the name "desert"; it was called the Abbey of Gellone until his death in 812, then the Abbey of Guillaume, and Saint-Guilhem after his canonisation in 1066, while the nearby abbey of Aniane had been founded around 782 by one of his relatives. A relic said to be a piece of the True Cross made the abbey a great centre of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, on the road to Santiago de Compostela, and the village grew around it, within the diocese of Lodève; during the Revolution it was briefly renamed Verdus-le-Désert (Wikipedia, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert).

Highlights

• The Romanesque abbey church - a largely intact eleventh-century building.
• The remaining cloister fragments - what was left after the sale abroad.
• The village lanes - one main street of stone houses along a stream.
• The Pont du Diable - a medieval bridge over the Herault below.

When to go

April to June and September to October; the village is on the Compostela route and busy in summer, when the river below draws swimmers and parking becomes impossible.

Things to know

Much of the cloister is in New York, and what remains is fragmentary. The village is one narrow street of shops and fills quickly. Summer river crowds at the Pont du Diable are heavy.

Nearby

Montpellier lies southeast; the Grotte de Clamouse is close.