The Abbey at Villers-la-Ville

The Villers abbey (Wiki, Pictures) is a short drive from Brussels hardly 20 min from the suburb of Waterloo. Founded in 1146 , it's one of the only complete medieval Abbey ruins left in Europe. The grounds include the Abbot's Palace and garden, kitchens, scriptorium, dormitory, very large church, workshop, hostelry, prison and more. The prison was actually mentioned by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. In it's height it was the home of a couple dozen monks and over 300 brothers with thousands of peasants and tenant farmers working a large range of land surrounding the abbey. It was a wealthy enterprise for most of the middle ages until it was burned out by French revolutionaries in 1796.

I was rather surprised to see a railway (built in 1855) cut through the grounds of the abbey ruining any good panoramic shots of the site, but they managed to preserve the entire site dispate the unfortunate addition.

It's a great site to visit because you can get very close to very old art and architecture. Much thanks to my friend Madigan for tipping me off on this site. The pictures are not the best I have made, but you can't beat the subject matter for light, color and contrast.