William I, Duke of Aquitaine, founded the Benedictine abbey at Cluny in 910 as the motherhouse of the Congregation of Cluny, with Berno as first abbot. Three churches were built in succession. Cluny II, built from about 955 to 981, encouraged stone-vaulted churches in Burgundy. Abbot Hugh of Semur started Cluny III in 1088, and Hézelon de Liège was called in as architect that year.
Cluny III, a Romanesque church, was the largest in Europe until the 16th century. The campaign was financed by an annual census from Ferdinand I of León and Castile, later doubled by Alfonso VI.
The abbey was sacked in 1790 and sold in 1798 for 2,140,000 francs, and quarried for about twenty years. About 10 percent of the great church's floor space survives, including the south transept and its bell tower. Kenneth John Conant's excavations began in 1927, and the site has housed an engineering school since 1901.
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