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Origin and history

Sainte-Anne de Moutons Abbey is a former Benedictine monastery founded in 1634 on the lands of the Palet farmhouse in Avranches (Manche). Originally intended to welcome young daughters of noble families of Avranchin and Saint-Malo, he was transferred in 1692 under the impulse of Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet, who installed the nuns of the Abbey of the Moutons at Saint-Clément, giving him his present name.

In 1793 the nuns were expelled and the monastery converted into barracks. Napoleon I handed him over to the city in 1810, but the War Department recovered him in 1818. After becoming a municipal property in 1828, it housed a school, an asylum, and a 450-seat theatre in 1840, designed by architect François Cheftel. During World War II, the 1944 bombings destroyed the chapel and the abbess' home.

Since 1974, the buildings have housed the Théâtre d'Avranches, the Cultural Centre and the School of Music. Two elements have been protected from historical monuments since 1935: the galleries of the cloister and a well transferred to the Jardin des Plantes. The abbey thus illustrates the successive transformations of a religious heritage into a civil and cultural space.

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