Abbaye aux Dames

Following in the footsteps of the great ladies of Caen and their noble daughters.

On June 18, 1066, the day of the abbey's consecration, Mathilde and Guillaume offered to God the fruit of their union. Their little Cécile was 5 years old. She was raised in the monastery, became abbess, and bestowed upon herself the title of Madame de Caen—an honor since then bestowed upon all the Mothers who succeeded her in this abbey of noble ladies, whose nuns came from the upper aristocracy... until the Revolution, which decreed the abolition of noble privileges and the secularization of Church property.

Then the monastery, magnificently restored in the 18th century, became a barracks, a workhouse, and a hospice. And from decline to decay, it regained its splendor to house the Regional Council, the heir to ducal power. As for the church of these Ladies, although much altered, it retains that Romanesque harmony which speaks so well to the silence of the soul. Don't miss the underground crypt of Saint-Nicolas. The authenticity of the 11th century is there, in this forest of columns whose capitals blossom into volutes cradled by a breath of eternity.