The Conservatoire
Saint-Pierre Abbey
The place: an eighteenth-century Maurist house, forty-five minutes from Toulouse.
Brick ranges, an arcaded gallery, a grand staircase, chapels, a library, classrooms, workshops, sixty rooms, grounds and gardens: more than twenty spaces make it possible to hold a teaching course, a worksite and a conference here at the same time.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Ninth century? | The departmental archives record that the abbey “would have been founded in the ninth century”; the commune places it around 940. No surviving document fixes the year. |
| 993 | Earliest secure attestation: a bull of John XV confirms Garin, abbot of Lézat and of Cuxa, in the government of five monasteries, Mas-Grenier among them |
| 1574 | The monks expelled, the abbey plundered and burned during the Wars of Religion |
| 1645 | The Maurist reform introduced |
| Eighteenth century | Rebuilding of the conventual buildings |
| 1790 | The community dissolved, the church demolished |
| 1921-2014 | Religious life returns, then a community of Benedictine nuns |
| 2015 | Foundation of the Conservatoire |
The estate
Work on the land, which the Rule never separated from study, continues around the abbey: an orchard of old varieties, a garden, an apiary. It is run by the abbey’s farm.
A house at work
The Conservatoire has brought the buildings back into use: for study, for the care of the house, for craft workshops, for hospitality and for the land.
Sixty rooms for courses, residencies, worksites and cultural stays.
Classrooms and conference rooms, a library, a study room.
Working areas for masonry, carpentry, joinery and the decorative arts.
For receiving groups on full board.
Maurist buildings, cloister, chapels, archaeological remains.
Orchard, gardens and farmland around the historic enclosure.
Since 2022 a regular programme of workshops, cultural stays, events and retreats has been held here. They are presented in four languages, with booking online, at abbayesaintpierre.org.
Then and now
About 1910TodayThe tower pavilion, on a postcard of the early twentieth century and today.
Where the abbey is
On the bank of the Garonne, between Toulouse and Montauban.
Staying and visiting
Stays, events and the monastic market are presented on the abbey’s own website.