Saint George Palace, Rennes

The year was 1032 AD. Duke Alain III of Brittany founded the Benedictine Abbey of Saint George in the name of his sister Adele, who was a Benedictine nun. Adele became the convent's first abbess. In the 1660s, Magdelaine de la Fayette, the 38th abbess, commissioned architect Pierre Corbineau to design her a new abbey.

Corbineau, assisted by another architect from Laval, Tugal Caris, built the new abbey, Saint George's Palace, on the site of a former Benedictine edifice of the 11th century. Two stones were laid; one by the Bishop of Rennes, and the other, by the redoubtable Magdelaine. The stones had copper plates calling the bishop "illustrious" and the abbess "celebrated."

In 1792, the Revolution forced abbess Julie Barreau de Girac and 24 nuns, three novices, and eleven lay sisters to give up the Abbey. The stone cross above the pediment was destroyed, and the abbey properties became barracks. In 1970 the cross was restored as a reminder of the building's heritage as an abbey.

The abbey building features a long gallery of nineteen windows within granite arches. The gallery can be reached via a double staircase with stone balustrades. Two pavilions are at each end of the gallery. There are dormer windows on the mansard roof. Above three windows in the center is a pediment surmounted by a stone cross. Iron bars bolted to the facade above each arch spell out the name MAGDELAINEDLFAYETTE.

Since 1930 the building has been listed as a Historical Monument of France.