200 Euros Cluny Abbey

Cluny Abbey, at its twelfth-century peak, was the largest church in Christendom — a distinction it held until the completion of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Monnaie de Paris issued this coin as part of its ongoing architectural heritage series, drawing on Cluny's particular importance to French Burgundian history. What survives of the abbey today is a fraction of the original structure; Revolutionary-era authorities sold most of it off as building stone after 1789, leaving the south transept tower as virtually the only substantial remnant.