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Soreze (south-west of Tarn, Midi-Pyrénées).

The little town has a medieval centre but is most of all known for its school-abbey.

In 754, Benedictine order monks built here an abbey with the help of the authorities that give them a large land.
Since the beginning, a school set next to the abbey and the monks teach there the reading, the arithmetic and the prayer.

The abbey was pillaged and destroyed a lot of times the next centuries.

The king Louis XVI established the place as a Royal military school where education was of the highest quality, in a military discipline and a religious moral.
The teaching was multidisciplinary : literature, mathematics, astronomy, history and geography, but also music, dance, drawing and painting.
The boys had also a physical education, in the big park behind the abbey, where an olympic pool was set.
Soreze school was for an elite and the entrance price was expensive.

In 1854, the Father Lacordaire gave to the school its prestige after some times of decline.

The school ended in 1991.
A lot of politics, officers or artists went here.

Historical monument since 1988, the place is now managed by a mixed office : the city, the department and the region.
It finances the restoration works, and wants to make it an important cultural and touristic place : luxury hotel, museum, concerts, historical conferences, firms seminars...