Sylvanès: a quiet French village with a world musical festival

Sylvanès (Aveyron) is a quiet village of 116 inhabitants in between Toulouse and Montpellier that has attracted throngs of churchgoers and music aficionados since the late 1970s following a reconstruction effort of its abandoned abbey.

The abbey is the nurturing alcove of its eponymous contemporary and world music festival, with 2026 marking the 49th edition, running from July 12-September 6.

The programme features some 30 artistic and spiritual performances, including traditional songs from Corsica and the Balkans, a gospel concert, and operas by Henry Purcell.

The abbey was awarded the Centre Culturel de Rencontre label delivered by the minister of culture, given to monuments and buildings participating in maintaining a cultural project worthy of public interest.

Controversial history

The abbey's reconstruction was initiated by the late André Gouzes, a priest and church composer, and supported by other construction efforts that helped Sylvanès become a hot spot for spiritual and cultural activities within the region.

Mr Gouzes died in August 2024, at the age of 81. 

Accusations of paedophilia against Mr Gouzes and other priests cast doubts on the future of the abbey. However, Michel Wolkowitsky, the director of the abbey and the mayor of Sylvanès, refused to associate the abbey only to Mr Gouzes, reminding that the reconstruction project was a joint project reuniting people from various communities.

“He was the founder and an emblematic figure. But the abbey is more about a common and extraordinary adventure. We are only the property’s servants,” said Mr Wolkowitsky.

That common adventure started in 1975 when Mr Gouzes, an inhabitant of the southern nearby village of Brusque (Aveyron), started a spiritual and cultural enterprise in restoring the abbey with a group of a dozen people including Mr Wolkowitsky. 

Successful restoration

The reconstruction was split into three phases - the kitchen and sanitary areas, then the cloister, scriptorium and abbatial dwelling , then the final work on the church - between 1975 and 1991.

The abbey was built in 1136 and organised the agricultural activities of the village. The abbey slowly decayed before being abandoned during the Revolution period.

The project followed a decision from the village to own spiritual buildings and resulted in the mairie buying the abbey in 1969, then a farm which had been used as a presbytery, said Mr Wolkowitsky.

A wooden chapel from Russia

From the reconstruction emerged an association, the festival in 1977 and another Orthodox chapel in 1994, the result of a joint partnership with Mr Wolkovitsky, Gouzes and Kostroma’s bishop Alexandre Moghilev.

The 27m tall and 300m² wooden chapel was built in 1993 by Russians in Kirov - 790km northeast of Moscow - before being transferred to France by train in 1994 and placed about 4.5km from the abbey. 

Mr Wolkowitsky said the association was looking to extend the restoration of the abbey in an effort to close its cloister. 

“The abbey seeks to a beacon of humanist values through artistic and cultural transmission,” said Mr Wolkowitsky