Abbaye d'Hautecombe

Hautecombe Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery, later a Benedictine monastery, in Saint-Pierre-de-Curtille near Aix-les-Bains in Savoy, France. For centuries it was the burial place of the members of the House of Savoy. It is visited by 150,000 tourists yearly.

The origins of Hautecombe lie in a religious community which was founded about 1101 in a narrow valley (or combe) near Lake Bourget by hermits from Aulps Abbey, near Lake Geneva. In about 1125 it was transferred to a site on the north-western shore of the lake under Mont du Chat, which had been granted to it by Amadeus, Count of Savoy, who is named as the founder; and shortly afterwards it accepted the Cistercian Rule from Clairvaux. The first abbot was Amadeus de Haute-Rive, afterwards Bishop of Lausanne. Two daughter-houses were founded from Hautecombe at an early date: Fossanova Abbey (afterwards called For Appio), in the diocese of Terracina in Italy, in 1135, and San Angelo de Petra, close to Constantinople, in 1214.

It has sometimes been claimed, but as often disputed, that Pope Celestine IV and Pope Nicholas III were monks at Hautecombe.