Fontfroide Abbey, Narbonne: Tickets, Hours and What to See

Fontfroide Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery 15 km (9.3 mi) south-west of Narbonne in the Corbières hills, it opens every day of the year, and an adult self-guided ticket costs €14 (about $16, £12) and covers the cloister, the church, the rose garden and the terraced gardens. Fontfroide Abbey takes 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes to walk round at your own pace, and the last tickets go 30 minutes before the site closes.

It was a cloudy day when we drove out to Fontfroide from Narbonne, France. We didn’t mind, because dark skies suit a place with this much history: nearly a thousand years of it, a role in the crusade against the Cathars, and a second life as an artists’ house after a painter bought the whole abbey in 1908. The abbey gave us two complimentary tickets for that visit, and I took several hundred photos anyway.

Is Fontfroide Abbey worth the detour from Narbonne?

Fontfroide Abbey is worth the 20-minute drive from Narbonne if you like architecture, gardens or early 20th-century art, and it is not worth it if you are short of time and want a town to wander. Fontfroide is a private monument in a wooded valley with no village attached, so you drive there, spend one to two hours and drive back; there is nothing else within walking distance.

Three things make the detour pay, and they are listed below in the order they impressed us.

1. Architecture: the cloister and the abbey church are among the most completely preserved Cistercian buildings in Europe, and the church is bare in a way that most French churches are not, which is the point of the Cistercian rule.
2. Stained glass: the dormitory windows were assembled by Richard Burgsthal out of fragments of church windows destroyed across northern and eastern France in the First World War, so they read as mosaics rather than pictures.
3. Gardens: 8 hectares (19.8 acres) of parks and gardens inside an 800-hectare (1,977-acre) estate, including a rose garden of close to 2,500 roses and a set of terraced gardens rebuilt after a fire.

Skip it if you are travelling without a car outside July and August, because there is no public transport to the abbey for ten months of the year. Skip it too if you are visiting with a dog, unless you are happy to leave it in one of the three free kennels at the entrance.

Fontfroide Abbey tickets and opening hours

A self-guided adult ticket to Fontfroide Abbey costs €14 (about $16, £12), a guided visit costs €17.50 ($20, £15), children under 6 go free, and the abbey is open every day of the week. Tickets are sold on the site and online, and there is no separate garden ticket any more: since 2015 the terraced gardens are part of the monument visit, which is a change from how Fontfroide used to sell entry.

The three ticket types and what each covers are set out in the table below.

Children under 6 are free on every ticket. A treasure-hunt sheet for families is sold at reception as an add-on for €5 (about $6, £4). The abbey also runs a booked-only “Regards contemporains” visit of about 60 minutes, from €22 ($26, £19), which opens the Odilon Redon library; the Redon sketches uncovered behind his painting La Nuit are on show until the end of February 2027, after which the painting goes back over them.

Opening hours change four times a year, and they are listed below.

• April, May and June: 10am to 6pm.
• July and August: opens earlier, at 9.30am, with evening visits added from Tuesday to Saturday during the summer weeks.
• September and October: 10am to 6pm.
• November to March: 10.30am to 5pm.

The abbey opens every day of the week in all four periods, and the last entry is 30 minutes before the site closes. Because the summer closing time and the exact evening-visit window move from year to year, check the website before you drive out in July or August. The ticket desk takes cash, cheques and bank cards, and it does not take American Express.

How to get to Fontfroide Abbey from Narbonne

Drive to Fontfroide Abbey, because a bus runs from Narbonne only in July and August and there is no public transport to the site for the rest of the year. The abbey sits on the D613 with a Narbonne postcode, about 19 km (11.8 mi) by road from the city and roughly 20 minutes at the wheel.

Leave the A9 or the A61 at Narbonne Sud, follow signs for Lézignan-Corbières, then at Montredon-des-Corbières pick up the D613 and follow the brown “Abbaye de Fontfroide” signs. From Carcassonne it is about 50 minutes on the A61, leaving at exit 25. Parking at the entrance is free and open to every visitor. Motorhomes can park during the day but not overnight; the nearest overnight aire is at the village of Bizanet, 6 km (3.7 mi) away.

Without a car, your options are the July and August Citibus service from Narbonne, a taxi, or a guided excursion. Narbonne itself is easy to reach on the main line between Toulouse, Montpellier and Perpignan, so plenty of people arrive by train to Narbonne and pick up a vehicle there. If you are already driving the region, car rental in the south of France makes Fontfroide an easy add-on to a Corbières or coastal day.

Visiting Fontfroide Abbey

A self-guided visit to Fontfroide Abbey follows a marked one-way route through the entrance court, the lay brothers’ building, the Louis XIV court, the cloister, the church, the monks’ promenade and the dormitory, then out into the gardens. You are handed a ground plan with notes on each room and square, and arrows around the site keep you on the route so you do not miss anything. We did the self-guided version and started at the abbey buildings.

The visit begins in the entrance court, moves through the building of the lay brothers and opens into the Louis XIV court. A hallway takes you on from there into the cloister, which was both a passage and a place of contemplation: the monks crossed it going from prayer to the meal and from the meal to study, and they also walked its four sides reading or meditating.

Next comes the church, and it is the opposite of what European church-going usually prepares you for. There is no grandeur, no decoration, no gold. I appreciated the austerity of the Cistercians, because the absence of everything is what creates the calm. The one thing that held us was the stained glass.

The monks’ cells are on the first floor and look out over a promenade that doubled as a rainwater collector, with the water running into a tank buried under the cloister garden. The dormitory of the lay brothers is where the glass gets remarkable. Its windows were made by the artist René Billa, who worked as Richard Burgsthal, out of the debris of church windows destroyed across northern and eastern France during the First World War. They are mosaics of other people’s glass rather than pictures, and Burgsthal made the church windows here too.

The rose garden

The rose garden sits behind the abbey church on the monks’ old cemetery, and it holds close to 2,500 rose bushes, which makes it one of the largest rose gardens in the south of France. It was planted in 1988 on ground that had been a kitchen garden and, before that, the burial ground of the community, so the roses now cover the graves.

The roses flower from mid-May to the end of September, varying with the year, so a March or a November visit gets you the abbey without them. Fontfroide has its own variety among them: the “Abbaye de Fontfroide” rose, bred by Guillot, with double flowers that deepen towards a strong pink and a heavy scent. The abbey shop sells the plant.

Terraced gardens

The terraced gardens climb the hillside facing the abbey buildings and were probably laid out in the 16th century, under the influence of Constance de Frégose, the mother of one of the abbey’s commendatory abbots. The Fayet family reworked them in the early 20th century, then a fire in 1986 destroyed almost all of them and years of neglect followed. Restoration began in 2007, and since 2015 the terraces have been part of the standard visit rather than a separate ticket.

Two routes run through them. The historical route works through the periods as themed gardens, from the enclosed monastic Hortus Conclusus of the 12th to 14th centuries and the medieval Hortus Deliciarum, through the Renaissance terraces and the classical garden, to the landscape garden of roughly 1770 to 1900, with a bee garden and a stretch of Mediterranean woodland along the way. Eighteenth-century statues that Gustave Fayet brought to Fontfroide, restored by the sculptor Alphonse Snoeck, stand on the levels, and there are benches. The second route, the promenade du bosquet, is steeper and takes you up the enclosure wall to the highest point of the terraces, where you get the whole abbey and the massif behind it in one view.

Art at Abbaye Fontfroide

The art at Fontfroide exists because Gustave Fayet, the painter and collector who bought the abbey in 1908, invited other artists to stay and work in it. Fayet was no hermit, and several of his guests left something behind.

Four names matter here, and they are listed below.

1. Richard Burgsthal, a personal friend of Fayet, who made the stained glass for the dormitory and for the church.
2. Odilon Redon, another friend, who painted two large decorative works, Le Jour and La Nuit, for the abbey library.
3. Paul Gauguin, a close friend whom Fayet supported and collected, and who stayed at the abbey to work.
4. Gustave Fayet himself, whose own paintings hang in a two-room museum on the estate.

The museum is small and opens on request rather than as part of the general route. It is two rooms, and I am glad we asked, because it is the part of the visit that explains why the rest of the collection is here at all. The Redon library is also kept for themed and guided visits rather than the standard ticket, and it is the one room where photography is not allowed.

What is open when

Not every room at Fontfroide is open on every ticket or in every season, so the visit you get depends on the date and the ticket type. The abbey library and the Fayet rooms are opened for guided and themed visits rather than for the self-guided route, which is why we found doors closed on our summer visit.

Three things move with the calendar, and they are listed below.

• Roses: in flower from mid-May to the end of September, absent the rest of the year.
• Hours: longest in July and August, shortest from November to March, with the last entry always 30 minutes before closing.
• Redon’s sketches: on show in the library until the end of February 2027, on the booked “Regards contemporains” visit only.

If a specific room is the reason you are going, book the guided or themed visit rather than the self-guided one, and phone ahead. The site is large, the staff are few, and rooms rotate.

Who founded Fontfroide Abbey, and who owns it now

Fontfroide Abbey was founded in 1093 by Aimery I, Viscount of Narbonne, joined the Cistercian order in 1144, and has been privately owned since 1908 by the family of the painter Gustave Fayet. Fontfroide began as a Benedictine house, stayed poor and obscure, and had to be refounded by Ermengarde, Viscountess of Narbonne, who granted it enough land in 1157 to make it wealthy. It became the mother house of Poblet in Catalonia.

The abbey did not merely survive the Cathar period, which is how the story often gets told. It took the other side: Fontfroide fought alongside Pope Innocent III against the Cathars, the movement the church had declared heretical and which was strong in exactly this part of Languedoc. The Black Death reached Narbonne in 1348 and wiped out almost the whole community. The abbey was dissolved in 1791 during the Revolution, refounded in 1858 by monks from Sénanque, and abandoned in 1901 when the community was driven out of France and went into exile in Spain.

Gustave Fayet and his wife Madeleine Fayet d’Andoque bought the abbey in 1908, reportedly to keep it out of the hands of an American sculpture collector who would have taken the stonework apart. They restored it over years and ran it as a place for artists. Their descendants still own it, still restore it, and still work Fontfroide’s vineyards, which produce wine under the AOC Corbières appellation.

Eating and drinking at the abbey

Lunch at the abbey is a better option than most monument restaurants, because La Table de Fontfroide holds a toque from Gault & Millau and carries the French Maître Restaurateur label, which requires cooking from raw produce on site. The menus change with the seasons and lean Mediterranean. Booking is advised, because the restaurant fills on some days.

There is also a snack area if you only want a break, and a tasting cellar, the Caveau de Dégustation, selling the estate’s Corbières wines alongside local honey and tapenade.

Practical information

The details you need on the day are listed below.

• Address: Abbaye de Fontfroide, Route départementale 613, 11100 Narbonne.
• GPS: latitude N 43° 7′ 45.0336″, longitude E 2° 53′ 51.1038″.
• Parking: free at the site entrance, with no overnight motorhome parking.
• Dogs: not allowed inside, with three free individual kennels at the entrance on a first-come basis and lead walks permitted on the paths around the abbey.
• Photography: allowed for personal use everywhere except the Redon library, and drones are banned.
• Payment: cash, cheques and bank cards, but no American Express.

For current prices, opening days and the tour calendar, the website is the source that gets updated first.

Tours from Narbonne

Because the abbey has no public transport for ten months of the year, a guided excursion is the practical way to reach it without your own car, and the same trips usually take in the Corbières vineyards or the Canal du Midi. What is currently bookable around Narbonne is shown below.

Fontfroide also fits into a longer drive rather than a stand-alone day trip. It sits inland from the coast our South of France itinerary follows, and we reached it as a day trip from Leucate Plage, up the A9 and then inland on the D613.

Where to stay in Narbonne

Stay in central Narbonne if you want to walk to dinner and the market, or at the southern edge of town if you are driving and want parking and a pool. Narbonne is 20 minutes from the abbey either way, so the choice is about the city rather than about Fontfroide. To compare what is available across the whole area, hotels and apartments in the south of France covers Narbonne, the Corbières villages and the coast in one search.

Three places we would point you at are listed below, cheapest first.

Budget: Les Chambres des Barques

Les Chambres des Barques is a guest house with character in the centre of Narbonne, in an old house divided into five large rooms of about 25 m² (269 sq ft), each with an en-suite bathroom. Rooms have a TV, air conditioning that you will want, tea and coffee facilities and free WiFi, and there is a shared living area and kitchen. It is two minutes on foot from Les Halles, the covered market, and a few steps from the canal. Book a room or read reviews on TripAdvisor.

Boutique: La Maison Gustave

La Maison Gustave is a bed and breakfast in the middle of the city, next to the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire and the Cathédrale Saint-Just et Saint-Pasteur. The rooms are individually styled, modern but built around the house’s original features, and each has a tea and coffee maker. Free WiFi and a continental breakfast are included, and guests rate the location and the beds highly. Book a room or read reviews on TripAdvisor.

Chain: Novotel Narbonne Sud A9/A61

Novotel Narbonne Sud sits outside the centre, about a 5-minute drive away and close to the A9, which makes it the easy choice if you are driving. It has a seasonal outdoor pool, a garden, a terrace, two restaurants, a sauna, free secure parking and electric-vehicle charging, and the rooms are simple and modern with air conditioning and free WiFi. Pets are allowed. Book a room or read reviews of the hotel’s restaurant on TripAdvisor.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below come from a summer visit to the abbey and from checking its own site for the rules that decide whether the day works, since Fontfroide is privately run and sets all of them itself.

1. Arrive by car unless you are coming in July or August. A Citibus service links Narbonne to the abbey in those two months only, and for the other ten there is no public transport to the door at all. The drive is about 19 km (11.8 mi) and 20 minutes from Narbonne, and parking at the entrance is free.
2. Match the ticket to the season, because the closed rooms move. We went in summer and found the library and the dining hall shut, which is when the roses are in full flower; in winter the roses are gone and those rooms open. The rose garden flowers from mid-May to the end of September rather than from April, whatever older accounts say.
3. Ask at reception for the Fayet museum. The two rooms open on request rather than as part of the standard route, and they are the part of the visit that explains why a Cistercian abbey holds a collection of paintings at all. Photography is fine everywhere except the Redon library.
4. Take cash or a card that is not American Express. The ticket desk accepts cash, cheques, chèques-vacances and ordinary bank cards, and nothing else, which is a poor thing to discover at the desk after a 20-minute drive out of Narbonne.
5. Plan for the kennels if you are travelling with a dog. Dogs cannot go inside, and the three free individual kennels at the entrance come with water but work first come, first served, and are not available during the evening visits. Lead walks on the paths around the abbey are allowed.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her visit to the Abbaye de Fontfroide near Narbonne, made on a day trip from Leucate Plage with two complimentary tickets from the abbey. The team covers France for independent travellers, including the monuments, the guided visits, the hotels in Narbonne and the car rental worth booking around the Corbières, and updates this page when prices, opening hours and tour formats change.