Lavaudieu

Lavaudieu (the valley of God) has much to offer the lover of Romanesque architecture. This village was indeed the site of a Benedictine abbey founded in the eleventh century. What remains of the original building is of the very first order and, moreover, perfectly restored.

The village cloister is the only one in Auvergne to have survived; its elegant columns, alternately single and double, support Romanesque arcades, carved capitals and an oak gallery. The abbey church of Saint-André holds a nave of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as well as fourteenth-century frescoes evoking scenes of the Passion, and a striking allegory of the Black Death (the plague). In addition, in the nuns' refectory, you can see a large twelfth-century mural showing the Virgin in majesty. In the village, the picturesque main street leads to a pretty square adorned with a wrought-iron cross and lined with winegrowers' houses.

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