Stavelot Abbey is one of the oldest monastic foundations in Belgium. Right at the heart of the town of Stavelot, the remains of the abbey church along with the monastic buildings, form the historic centre of the former principality of Stavelot-Malmedy. Its story begins in around 650, when Remaclus, a monk from Aquitaine, founded a religious community in Malmedy and in Stavelot. Legend has it that Remaclus was accompanied by a donkey who helped him build the monastery by carrying the stones on its sides, in two large panniers. The devil, who was still in charge in this part of the Ardennes, decided to cause some trouble. One day, as Remaclus was resting in the shade of an oak tree, Satan, who had turned himself into a wolf, devoured the donkey. When Remaclus woke up and couldn’t see his donkey, he went to look for him. As he was looking in a shady area by the Amblève River, he discovered an enormous, drowsy well-fed wolf behind a rock, with the donkey’s panniers by his side. Realising what the crafty devil had done, he threw his rosary around the animal’s neck and tied his dead donkey’s panniers to it to force it to finish building the monastery. When construction was complete, Remaclus removed the panniers and took his rosary back. The wolf disappeared immediately. This famous legend of Saint Remaclus gave Stavelot its name, “Stâv'leû” which is Walloon for “the wolf’s barn”. The town’s coat of arms also refers to the legend, showing the wolf, laden with two panniers, filled with stones, and Saint Remaclus, wearing his mitre, and holding a cross and a book. The abbey experienced its most impressive expansion in the 11th century, during the abbacy of Poppon. To replace the building erected the previous century, Poppon started to build a huge pilgrimage church, designed to welcome the many pilgrims who came to visit the relics of Saint Remaclus. The subtle blend of Ottonian and French influences, due to its geographic position between two major civilisations, means that it is of unusual archaeological interest. Its impressive dimensions, the originality of its layout, and then the richness of its treasures, all contribute to its fame. Archaeological work carried out from 1977 revealed a large proportion of this stunning abbey. If you take a few steps into the centre of the remains and look towards the tower, to the west, you will see that the Ottonian building had a wide aisle, divided into three naves made up of eight rows separated by cross-shaped pillars. If you look towards the other end of the building, to the east, you will see the transept and its apse with a flat chevet marking the columns. Where the transept crosses the aisle, you will see the monks’ choir, the floor of which is lower than the rest of the church. The semi-circular choir is surrounded by an ambulatory with a polygonal chevet. If you go along the gently sloping side corridors, you can go into the semi-buried outdoor crypt, built as an extension to the ambulatory. As wide as the aisle in the church, it is divided into five naves, ending in staggered apse chapels, each of which houses the base of an altar. The building remained pretty much intact until the beginning of the 16th century. At that time, the church was in a very poor state, and Abbot G. de Manderscheidt embarked on a gothic reconstruction, whilst respecting the original layout of the Ottonian church. In 1796, fleeing monks abandoned the abbey to the revolutionary armies. The church went on to be used as a quarry, and in 1808, the tower was demolished as far as the bell-ringing level.