Abbaye de Vaucelles, 12th-century Cistercian abbey in Les Rues-des-Vignes, France.

Abbaye de Vaucelles is a former Cistercian monastery in Les Rues-des-Vignes, founded in 1131 by Bernard of Clairvaux. Its surviving stone buildings include a vaulted hall with pointed arches on round columns and tall windows, and a long building with a steep red tile roof and narrow round-headed windows. The abbey church, begun in the 12th century, was destroyed after the Revolution.

Bernard of Clairvaux founded the abbey in 1131 on land given by Hugues d'Oisy, castellan of Cambrai, and laid the first stone on 1 August 1132; it was his thirteenth foundation. A first Romanesque church of 1140-1149 was replaced from 1190 by a Gothic abbey church 137 m long with a 64 m transept, the largest in the Cistercian order. Suppressed in 1790, the abbey was largely destroyed during the Revolution and the First World War, then bought by the Lagoutte family in 1971 and by the Nord department in 2017.

The abbey's name comes from the valley of the Escaut where it stands, and the site keeps a medieval garden that visitors can walk through. A thorn from the Crown of Thorns, entrusted to the abbots by Saint Louis in 1257, was among the relics kept here. The abbey was suppressed in 1790, and its Carrara marble main altar was later moved to the choir of Saint-Géry in Cambrai.

The site is in a rural area and requires advance contact to arrange a visit. Accessibility is limited to certain areas, so plan ahead and be prepared for outdoor conditions that change with the seasons.

The abbey church, begun after 1190, measured 137 metres long with a 64-metre transept, making it the largest Cistercian church in Europe. Its choir with ambulatory and radiating chapels was uncovered during excavations in 1988. The abbot Godescale was deposed and the abbot of Clairvaux punished for authorising a building so contrary to Cistercian simplicity.