www.cluny-tourisme.com. During the Middle Ages, the abbots of Cluny were among the most influential figures in western civilization. From their Burgundian seat, founded in 910, the Order of Cluny controlled a network of almost 1,200 Benedictine foundations spread throughout Europe, and answered to Rome alone. As a measure of their importance, St Hugh ordered the construction of a magnificent abbey church in 1089. Some 187 m long, 30 m high, with five naves and seven towers, it remained the largest building in Christendom after St Peter’s in Rome until it was demolished in 1789.

Only the south transept remains, and you need a powerful imagination to reconstruct the great church. Housed in the 15thC bishop’s palace, the three-room Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie displays beautiful rescued stone carvings and a fragment of the leather-scented library.