The Royal Abbey of Fontevraud is once a famous abby turned prison turned landmark, hotel, and restaurant. Unfortunately, on Yelp, there are various entries for this place, but all under different names and different addresses. Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud is the name of the site. Within the Abbey, there is Fontevraud L'Hôtel and attached to the hotel is Fontevraud Le Restaurant. To visit the site, you will need to by a ticket, or you can book the hotel to stay in there (they have special parking for hotel and restaurant guests) that allows you to roam the abby at night, free of charge. The hotel itself is modern and very pretty, and also very child friendly. When we asked for a crib for the room, we had real wooden crib placed inside by the time we checked in. they even offer babysitting sevice for 12 eur an hour, provided you book with them 48h ahead of time. However their regular rooms lack a fridge so it's actually quite hard to feed the baby there. The attached restaurant is a one-star michelin. Their breakfast at 18eur a person is a bit ostentatious in pricing, especially since they only offer some vienoisserie, some ham and cheese and yogurt, and oeuf cocotte. The first morning, they had a really awesome meat and mushroom suace for the cocotte, but the second morning they did not. To book their restaurant for dinner can be difficult unless you are staying there. We tried to book them in parallel to our stay and were rejected both times. However, when we were there, we were able to book dinner directly. The food there is really good but a little "modern". Prior to our amuse-bouche, we had a sheet to eat made of honey and nuts and goat milk. The menu is inexpensive for its quality, just as the hotel. 68 EUR for 4 courses and 34 eur for additional wine pairing. Additional prices for 6 courses and 8 courses and another additional pricing for wine pairings for the different courses respectively. The last dinner slot is at 8pm and there's a good reason for this. It takes forever between each course and they want you to really spend the time there. When I asked what time they close, we were told they close when the last patron leaves, whether that be 1am or 4am. By 11:30pm, we were not even at the dessert and cheese yet so we had to ask them to bring up the rest quickly as we were so tired! We were pleasantly drunk and happy walking out at almost 1am. The whole stay was such a wonderful experience. Great food, great rooms and services, and walking around the abbey is an unforgettable experience. Highly recommended!! read more

See all

The Hotel. At the reception desk they handed us an iPad and explained how it controlled the TV, replaced the room phone and could be used for photographs during our stay, they would email. The photographs to us. I looked at the grubby case, my jet lagged mind desperately wanting sleep. The recessed Hotel corridor lights turn on, then off as you pass by. Quiet, subtle and bright enough. The Hotel is a converted part of the monastery. Tasteful and quiet. It is a lovely retreat Later at midnight when I accidentally knocked a glass onto the floor in the bathroom, the glass shattered. I couldn't work out how to use the iPad to call reception. I got dressed, went to reception who handed me a dishpan and brush to clear up. I was shocked, and felt like crying. I cleared up the mess and went back to sleep. The next day, no one removed the dishpan, brush, broken glass. A replacement glass wasn't provided. The hotel is at once both stunningly wonderful, and missing the mark. Some of the staff are not strong, as mentioned in the last paragraph. Most of them were outstanding. Some were surly insensitive. There was almost always a line of people waiting at reception. Understaffed? My 78 year old mother and I shared a twin-bed room. Staff phoned around local restaurants to make us dinner reservations, they drove us and our luggage from the car park to the hotel. We used the hotel as a base to visit the Abbaye, Chinon, Chenonceaux, Saumer, and gently exploring the region. It's in a great location for this. I would visit again for the peace, amazing ambiance, few excellent staff and location. read more

See all

Outstanding location, rooms elegantly decorated with a great sense of adéquation with the place and its history. Service with the discretion you expect in a truly 4 star place. When staying at the hotel, you can visit the Abbey during the night : a unique experience. read more

I wanted to love this hotel. In the beginning I did, and I forgave the odd quirks in customer service. The grounds are utterly surreal, almost in a Stanley Kubrick way. It's not jut a hotel, but a compound made up of lots of buildings whose functions remained (at least to me) somewhat mysterious. There's a prison, a museum, homages to Jean Genet and Eleanor of Aquitaine -- who passed through these halls. There are underground tunnels and gigantic empty rectories. There are lots of buildings--the grounds are pretty vast--and nothing is terribly curated, so you're kind of on your own. To enter the front gate you need a code--so if you're checking in: GOOD LUCK. I got in by accident--a woman with a golf cart happened to be passting the front gate and opened it (it nearly shut on my car as I was passing through). I was then told that the hotel was 200 meters away ("over there" she said, and then pointed vaguely) and that if I had baggage she would need to get it later and then she sped off. There is no real signage pointing you to where the hotel is--so I peeked in a few buildings and kept walking until I found it. There is only a single person at the front desk who is extremely harried and charged with answering all the phones, making restaurant reservations, checking in guests, attending to the needs of the guests (for fans--there's no air conditioning, problems with the electronic keys, questions about how to get in, or where to eat, or how to work the weirdly difficult to access internet, etc), and ferrying luggage in her go cart. She got so overwhelmed checking me in that eventually she just sent me to my room and told me to "come back down later" because she was too busy with too many other things to help me. When I entered my room with the electronic key the front of the lock fell off. Then I just sat around waiting for a while, as she asked me to do. I couldn't change clothes because I didn't have my luggage and it's a long hike from the parking lot. Eventually I got my baggage and was told that I could have an ipad if I wanted--but she never explained that you could order room service from the ipad (though I wasn't really sure if this was even accurate--was there really room service?) and make hotel requests (there are no phones in the rooms) . I only found out about the hidden functions of the ipad because I couldn't work the internet from my computer and eventually relented and asked if I could use it (which led to a whole other drama with the lost ipad that she insisted I'd taken to my room, which I hadn't, until eventualy she found it sitting on the desk). When I asked the woman at the front desk if she could get me ice she snapped at me that she would get me the ice but "not right now--I'm very busy with other things!" When I tried to make a reservation for dinner I was told they were closed. The bar was closed too. The brasserie isn't really a brasserie I learned, even though the sign said they served Roman food. Nope! There's another small café that was closing -- and was supposedly opening the following morning at 10 am but -- nope! When I askes the woman at the café if there was a place to get coffee on the premises prior to 10am she said no, and that I had to go into town. But then I discovered that --lo--there **is** breakfast served, but no one tells you about it, and no one woud have even the remotest inkling where it was held, as there are no signs and it's at the back of a long corridor and hidden. There is some other restaurant called iBar, but I'm not sure if it is ever open, or functioning, though they do have a menu. I made a reservation for one of the restaurants in town on my first night, but couldn't figure out how to leave the grounds. The code to open the gate wasn't working. I had to have the woman drive me back with the go cart to explain it to me. Some of the people working here seem to know it is sorely mismanaged and understaffed. They all seem frustrated and agree with me when I tell them--because I did, a couple of times-- how confusing and unpleasant and oppressive it is to be a guest in this beautiful and unique hotel. I feel badly for them. Even the woman at the front desk who scremaed at me about the ice was a nice person who was clearly overwhelmed. But at the same time, is this my problem? I'm not visitng gratis--I'm a paying guest of the hotel. I came here for a retreat and was EXTREMELY STRESSED OUT for the entire two days of my stay. read more