Description of the monastery

The abbey consists mainly of four buildings bounding the cloister courtyard: the church to the north and a wing over 100 m long to the south are connected by two wings at right angles, framed by the entrance courtyard to the west and by another courtyard (called the Sapin courtyard at the end of the 18th century) to the east.

Built in ordinary plastered rubble masonry, the building reserves the cut stone for the slit corners, the window frames, the bands and cornices.

All the buildings comprise a basement (by the slope of the land going down towards the river l'Anterne) and an elevated ground floor, both mainly vaulted on internal pillars or elegant Tuscan order columns, and finally a first floor surmounted by attics.

The elevations are regularly pierced with bays organized in bays. The long south façade alone is animated by two pavilions with projecting corners and a central front body. The roofs have long sides, croups and flat tile roofing.

Inside, at the junction of the three bodies of buildings rise two wide staircases, with three straight rotating flights carried by columns around a central day.

The interior organisation under the old regime is well known: for example, we know that the south wing housed the refectories on the ground floor and the monks' rooms on the first floor, the east wing the chapter house and the west wing the library.

The imposing dimensions of the Faverney Abbey, reflected in particular in the development of the dormitories (composed of single rooms and their annexes) and the scale of the monumental staircases, without testifying to very refined architectural research, is one of the many monastic constructions or reconstructions in France in the first half of the 18th century.