Cult RoomsA pilgrimage to Thoronet Abbey.

The medieval abbey of Thoronet is considered one of the finest examples of Cistercian architecture. Established in the 12th century in a forested valley in Provence, in the south of France, the abbey was built in local pink-tinged stone cut by hand and assembled without the use of mortar. Its pared-back architecture—all clean lines, unadorned volumes and rhythmic forms—fostered disciplined, communal living and clarity of thought. Even the acoustics of the abbey’s church, which has an 11-second-long echo, imposed a certain sense of order, forcing the monks to sing slowly and perfectly together. 

The abbey went bankrupt and was secularized in 1785 but was one of the first buildings in France to be classified as a historical monument and has since come to inspire some of the greatest architects of the 20th and 21st centuries. To Le Corbusier, every detail of the abbey “represented a principle of creative architecture,” forming a building where “the whole and its details are one,” an “architecture of truth, tranquility and strength.” Its influence on his own ecclesiastical projects, as well as on many architects before and since then, has been profound. In 1964, the abbey was the setting of architect Fernand Pouillon’s celebrated historical novel, Les Pierres Sauvages [The Stones of the Abbey], and it is a place of pilgrimage for contemporary architects Tadao Ando and John Pawson.

Like Corbusier, Pawson was deeply inspired by the way that the light at Thoronet is inseparable from the architecture—an effect he implemented in his Nový Dvur Monastery in the Czech Republic. “The light brings with it shifts in tint on the surface of the stone, producing subtle exercises in perspective," he observed in Leçons du Thoronet [Lessons from Thoronet]. “In the closed world of the monastery, this graphic demonstration of the passage of time acquires particular significance.”