A church open to the sky
Walls standing at close to full height with nothing above them.
Marc Ryckaert (MJJR) — CC BY 3.0 · Jean-Pol GRANDMONT — CC BY 3.0 · Jean-Pol GRANDMONT — CC BY 3.0 · Jean-Pol GRANDMONT — CC BY 3.0
By train to Villers-la-Ville station and a short walk to the site, the easiest way without a car and about an hour in total. By car it is roughly forty minutes. Check the train timetable, since the line is not high-frequency, particularly at weekends.
Two hours for a comfortable walk through the church, refectory, cloisters and gardens, three if you want to read the interpretation and see the mill and water system remains. The site is larger than visitors expect.
No. The site is open ruins with almost no roofing, and rain spoils the visit entirely. Pick a clear day; spring and autumn beat summer for crowds and winter for weather.
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The ruins of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1146 south of Brussels, among the most extensive surviving monastic ruins in Europe. The complex covers some thirty-six hectares and its walls stand at close to their original height despite the loss of every roof. The Cistercians built away from towns deliberately and lived by agricultural and industrial work. Remains of the mill, the workshop and the water management system are still visible, and they explain how the abbey functioned as a self-sufficient economic unit rather than merely a place of worship. It was abandoned during the French Revolution and its stone sold off, and a railway was then cut through its grounds in the nineteenth century, which added to the destruction. What survives has been progressively restored since. Walking between the church open to the sky, the refectory and the inner cloisters is the whole experience. Access is by train from Brussels and a short walk, or by car in about forty minutes.
Walls standing at close to full height with nothing above them.
Remains of the mill, workshop and water system explain how the abbey sustained itself.
A line cut through the abbey grounds in the nineteenth century added to its destruction.
Villers-la-Ville, Wallonia, about thirty kilometres south of Brussels