Stavelot Abbey is located in Belgium, in the city of Stavelot. For a millennium, Stavelo was the capital of the principality of Stavelo-Malmedy, a small independent region in the Holy Roman Empire, which was ruled by the abbot rector. The city grew up around the Benedictine monastery, founded in 651 by the monk Remakl, later ranked Saints. Until the XII century, the abbey flourished and played a key political, economic and religious role not only in the region, but also in the international arena. The treasures of the monastery were great, the abbey owned priceless relics, one of the most famous is the Triptych Stavelot, a portable altar made of gold and enamel containing pieces of the True Cross. The Stavelot Triptych is housed in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. In the XII - XV centuries, the abbey gradually lost its power, many monastery buildings were dilapidated and destroyed. In 1501, William Manderstein became abbot of the abbey, under whose leadership the monastery churches and buildings were updated, the strictest discipline among the monks was restored. From the end of the 17th century adversity again fell on Stavelot Abbey. On October 4, 1689, the troops of the French king Louis XIV devastated and burned the city, plundered the Stavelot Abbey. In 1701, part of the tower of the monastery church was destroyed by lightning. And in 1759, during the French Revolution, the principality of Stavelo-Malmedy ceased to exist, the abbey of Stavelo was destroyed, and the monks were expelled from the monastery. During the first excavations in 1896, the sarcophagus of the 11th century rector Poppo was discovered among the ruins, in the 50s of the 20th century fragments of glass stained-glass windows of the 12th century were found, and on one of the pillars of the inside of the church are the remains of paintings dating from the 11th century, the era of the emperor Oton I. In 1998, a richly decorated 12th-century burial was found of the rector Vibald, adviser to Emperor Conrad III. In the restored part of the abbey there are now 3 museums: the Museum of the Principality of Stavelo-Malmedy, the Museum of Guillon Apollinar (a famous poet who lived at one time in Stavelot) and the Museum of the Spa Francochamp race track, which runs the Formula 1 stage.