Le Bec-Hellouin

A knight named Herluin founded an abbey in this wooded Normandy valley around 1034, and the village took both its name and its reason for being from it. Half-timbered houses gather around the Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, where Saint Anselm lived as a monk and Benedictines returned in 1948. Visitors can see the cloister and abbot's lodging, and the monks' library of nearly 100,000 books is open to the public.

Highlights

• Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, with its cloister and abbot's lodging
• The monks' library of almost 100,000 books, open to visitors
• Church of Saint-André, which took in statues from the abbey after 1791
• Half-timbered houses grouped around the abbey

Summary based on Wikipedia and Wikivoyage (CC BY-SA), written with AI assistance.