Abbaye d'Orval Is Rebuilt

In 1926, the de Harenne family offered the ruins of Orval and the surrounding land to the Cistercian Order so that monastic life could be re-established there. Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Abbot of Sept-Fons, accepted responsibility for the foundation and sent monks to Orval as the nucleus of a new community. The rebuilding revived a monastic site that had been sacked and burned during the French Revolution in 1793 and suppressed in 1795. During the following decades, the modern abbey was rebuilt on the historic grounds, and the new church was consecrated in 1948. The reconstruction also created the setting for the modern Orval brewery, which was built in the early 1930s to help finance the rebuilding of the abbey.