The Château-Abbaye de Cassan hosts meetings, conferences, workshops, general assemblies, cocktails, gala dinners, team building days, full private hire, film shoots and photo shoots. Its largest space, the priory church, takes 480 people, and the great gallery 150. Booking an event here also helps fund the upkeep of the monument. The Château-Abbaye de Cassan stands in Roujan, in the Hérault department of Occitanie, near Pézenas and at the edge of the Haut-Languedoc regional nature park.
Seminars and company events
The estate pitches itself as a setting for business meetings, workshops and conferences inside a medieval priory. The meeting rooms are paneled, and the formal French gardens and inner courtyards offer room for breaks and informal talks. A team can work in one of the salons in the morning, gather the whole group in the gallery or the church for a plenary, and end the day with a cocktail in the cloister courtyard or on the terraces.
The list of formats covers meetings and conferences, general assemblies, cocktails and gala dinners, full private hire, team building, film shoots and photo shoots.
Rooms and capacities
The priory church is the largest space, for up to 480 people. It is the Romanesque church built under Prior Guiraud and consecrated in 1115, the main surviving building from the medieval period.
The Grande Galerie takes 150 people and suits a plenary or a seated dinner.
The salons en enfilade are a row of connecting reception rooms, each listed for 35 people, which work as breakout rooms or for small committee meetings.
Outdoor spaces include the cloister courtyard and 18th-century terraces that open onto a park enclosed by walls.
History and setting
In 1066 five canons left the cathedral chapter of Saint-Nazaire in Béziers and settled near the church of Cassan, between Gabian and Roujan. In 1080 the Alquier family gave them the church and the land around it. Under Prior Guiraud (1106 to 1121), the community built a new monastery and church, and in 1118 a hospital and guesthouse for pilgrims. Cassan became one of the main spiritual centers of Lower Languedoc and the burial place of the Trencavel family, viscounts of Béziers, Carcassonne, Albi and the Razès. Pope Innocent III placed it under the direct protection of Rome in 1216, and King Philip VI granted it royal protection in 1335.
The monastery was closed and sold in 1791, during the Revolution, and took the name Château de Cassan. Several families owned it in the 19th and 20th centuries. The state then used it as a technical school (1946 to 1975) and a resettlement center (1975 to 1985). It returned to private hands in 1995, and the current owners bought it in 2002. Today it is a listed historic monument open to visitors from April to early November, with guided tours once a month.
The setting is rural: the priory sits between the old volcanic hills of Sainte-Marthe and Saint-Hilaire, a quiet landscape that the canons chose for a life of prayer.
Getting there
The château is in Roujan, close to Pézenas, in the Hérault. The official site does not give detailed directions; the events team answers by phone and email.
