Abbey of Hauterive, Cistercian monastery in Hauterive, Switzerland

Hauterive Abbey is a Cistercian monastery on a bend of the Sarine, 5.5 km southwest of Fribourg. Its church, built 1150–1160, is a Romanesque pseudo-basilica with a pointed barrel vault and a rectangular choir; the cloister keeps 12th-century double columns and 14th-century tracery. The convent buildings were rebuilt in the 18th century to plans by Franz Beer.

Guillaume de Glâne brought monks from Cherlieu Abbey between 1131 and 1137, demolished his own castle and reused its stone for the abbey, where he died as a lay brother in 1142 or 1143 and was buried in the choir. The church was consecrated on 25 February 1138 as Sancte Marie de Altaripa and confirmed by Pope Innocent II in 1142. Closed by the Fribourg government in 1848 after the Sonderbund War, it housed an agricultural school and then a teachers' seminary until monks from Wettingen-Mehrerau returned in 1939.

The abbey's name derives from Latin alta ripa, 'high bank', after the steep slopes above the Sarine. The choir stalls, made around 1482 from some 700 pieces, were dismantled during the 2021–2025 restoration, revealing Renaissance painted decorations hidden by 19th-century neoclassical altars. The liturgy is sung partly in Latin, using the traditional Cistercian Gregorian repertoire, and partly in French.

The abbey church was reopened to the public after restoration work and inaugurated on 4 September 2025. The site lies 5.5 km southwest of Fribourg in a bend of the Sarine, reached by road from Hauterive; the former chapel Saint-Loup and the 1732 monastery hostel stand above the abbey.

The abbey's coat of arms combines the black-and-white chequered band of Bernard of Clairvaux with the gold lion of Guillaume de Glâne. Guillaume himself demolished his own castle to reuse its stone for the monastery, died there as a lay brother around 1142-1143, and was buried in the choir.