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Stark and simple, the church of Notre-Dame’s impressive Romanesque façade was built around 1060, with a projecting porch flanked by two massive towers. Square at the base, octagonal above, they originally had wooden spires.

Once a welcoming hall for important guests, the storeroom, Gothic in design, Romanesque in decoration, is intact but for its ribbed vaulting.

Only the walls of Normandy’s tallest Romanesque nave still stand, left open to the skies after the demolition of the plaster vault that replaced the original, wood ceiling.

The west wall is all that survives of the 11th-century transept. The transept crossing was topped by a lantern tower, to let in maximum light in poor weather.

Nothing remains of the earliest choir. The ruins are from a 13th-century Gothic version, comprising an ambulatory with seven radiating chapels. An ornate rood screen is decorated with basreliefs illustrating the passion of Christ.

This covered arcade, built in the early 1330s to link the two churches, predates Charles VII, but was named after a visit he made here with his mistress, Agnès Sorel, whose heart is buried under a marble slab in the north transept chapel.

The façade and first two bays of the nave date from the 10th century; the chapel of St Martin contains signs of an even older oratory. The rest of the ruins date from the 13th and 14th centuries.

It was in this 11th- to 12th-century hall that a chapter from the rules of St Benedict was read out every morning, and monastic affairs were discussed. Between the 12th and mid-13th centuries, it became the abbots’ burial ground.

Today, the cloister is an expanse of grass with a yew tree at its centre, but it was once the heart of the abbey, used by monks for promenades, ceremonies, meditation and processions.

This imposing house was built for François de Harlay de Champvallon – a “commendatory” abbot appointed directly by the king.