The upper part of the entablature at the north-east corner of the doorway was destroyed by a shell, while others injured the roof of the lodge.
Take the Rue des Feuillants opposite, then Rue Saint-Martin on the left, to the Place de la République, where are the Bourse du Commerce (1898) and the Monument to the Defence of Soissons in 1870 (inaugurated in 1901).
On the south side of the square and bordered by the river Crise, there is the fine garden of the Horticultural Society at present in very bad condition.
Follow the Rue de Château-Thierry, alongside the garden, then its continuation, the Boulevard Jeanne d’ Arc, which makes a sharp bend, to the Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.
ABBEY OF SAINT-JEAN-DES-VIGNES (Hist. Mon.)
Founded in 1076, the Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes was one of the richest and most powerful monasteries of the Middle-Ages.
The liberality of the Kings of France, bishops, nobility and middle classes enabled the monks in the 13th and 14th centuries to erect a large abbey-church and important monastic buildings, the plan of which has been preserved in an engraving of 1673, reproduced below.
The plan is that followed almost invariably for monastic buildings. In the middle is the abbey-church. The monastery buildings proper: the rooms of the Regulars to which strangers are not admitted, the Novices’ quarters, the dormitories and refectory, are grouped round the four galleries of the cloister, which extend from the south front of the church.
On the east side of the cloister is a smaller cloister, abutting on which are the strangers’ rooms: the refectory and dormitories.
Behind, stands the isolated hospital with its own chapel. Near the entrance is the Abbot’s house, and further to the east, the store-rooms.