Orval Abbey (Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Orval), a Cistercianmonastery located in the Gaume region, in Villers-devant-Orval, is well known for its history and spiritual life but also for its local production of the Trappist beer Orval and a specific cheese. The site has been occupied since the Merovingian period, and it seems that there was already a chapel here in the 10th century. In 1070, a group of Benedictine monks from Calabria settled here, and began construction of a church and a monastery, but after some forty years they moved away. They were replaced by a community of Canons Regularr, who completed the construction, the church being consecrated on 30 September 1124.
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