Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Museum of the Great Chartreuse, installed since 1957 in the old house of the brothers, is intended to make discover the life of the Chartreux, a monastic order based on solitude and silence. This building, which functioned as a small monastery until the 17th century, once housed conversant monks and sick fathers, organized around a cloister. The Chartreux developed various activities to support their needs: breeding, printing, illumination, metallurgy, herbalism, and especially, since the seventeenth century, distillation of the famous liqueur de Chartreuse.

The museum offers a route in eighteen rooms, using models and audiovisuals to explain the order founded by Saint Bruno in 1084, its contemplative way of life, and its current influence. Two rooms are dedicated to Saint Bruno and to his meeting with Saint Hugues, bishop of Grenoble. A meditation space, arranged in a former oratory, allows visitors to soak up the spirit of the place. The Correrie, where the museum is located, was once run by a father prosecutor and served as a relay between the main monastery — still inhabited by some thirty monks — and the outside world.

Although the monastery itself does not visit itself, the museum offers privileged access to its history, supplemented by a one-hour walk (round trip) to the monastic site, nestled in a valley classified as Forest of Exception in 2015. The production of Chartreuse liqueur, emblematic of the order, is presented in Voiron, 30 km away.

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