C. The cloister
 
A place of prayer but also a passageway between the church and the community rooms (refectory, dormitory…) the lower cloister was restored by Etienne de Moral, abbot of Ambronay in the fifteenth century.

During the French Revolution the cloister was used as a promenade for political prisoners.  After a devastating fire in 1632, the upper gallery was restored in the seventeenth century.

To reach the upper gallery, a monumental staircase was built in the same period. Its ceiling is painted in trompe-l’oeil.