Palais Benedictine

As our travels took us northward, we began to move in the direction of the Cote d’Albatre (or Alabaster Coast). Fecamp, the only major town in this stretch, was originally the home of a Benedictine Abbey that was an important pilgrimage center in the 7th century. Today, one can still see the Lady Chapel of the Abbey, La Trinite, but that topic is for a future post.

Today, Fecamp is most noted for being the home of the Palais Benedictine, a neo-Gothic building and distillery of the famed Benedictine liqueur. Supposedly, Alexander Le Grand, a local wine merchant in the late 1800s, rediscovered the Benedictine monks recipe for this famous herbal liqueur.

The exterior of the building is extremely ornate. Hard to believe it is a distillery.







Budman and Hachie Gal at the entrance of the Palais Benedictine.



The "palace", built in 1882 and is really not a former palace in the true sense of the word, is still the home of the distillery which can be toured. More interesting to us was the fabulous “Belle-Époque” furnishings and decoration. Of course, the tour ended in the “obligatory” liqueur tasting area where one could sample the various liqueurs made on site and purchase any of the ones that caught your fancy. I thought they were rather nasty! The taste burned a bit, quite frankly.