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Join us for a cultural and nature escape at the legendary Abbaye Saint-Sixte in Westvleteren, home of the world’s rarest Trappist beer.

📜 A bit of history
The abbey was founded when Jan Baptist Victoor arrived here with monks from Mont des Cats in France. In 1838, the first expenses for a brewery were recorded, and a year later King Leopold I signed the brewing license. Over the years, the abbey expanded with new brewing halls and facilities.

Today, the monks of Westvleteren continue to brew only enough to sustain their abbey and charitable works. Their beer is ranked among the finest and rarest in the world - a tradition carefully guarded, almost ritualized, in its scarcity and exclusivity.

🐻 The bear of Saint-Sixte
Local folklore recalls a bear once roaming these woods, seen as a symbol of strength and silence. Like many medieval legends, it has become part of the abbey’s identity, a reminder that even sacred places are rooted in the wildness of nature.

As some would put it, traditions like Westvleteren beer are not merely remnants of the past - they are “invented traditions”, consciously maintained to embody continuity and authenticity in a modern world. The monks’ choice to limit production, to sell only from their abbey, and to resist commercialization, is itself a modern construction of rarity that makes this beer legendary. In a sense, tasting Westvleteren is not just drinking a beer - it’s participating in a living tradition shaped for both heritage and identity.

📍 Where?
Abbaye Saint-Sixte
Donkerstraat 12, 8640 Vleteren, Belgium

⚠️ Visits of the abbey are not possible.

🍽 What we’ll do

Stop at In de Vrede, one of the few cafés where you can taste Westvleteren Trappist beers and enjoy regional specialties.

For the sporty ones: a 7.5 km hike departs from the abbey, leading to the Lourdes grotto and through the Saint-Sixtus woods.

✨ Why join?
It’s the perfect mix of culture, legend, nature, and living tradition - a chance to discover how a small abbey in Flanders guards one of Europe’s most iconic rituals of authenticity, together with fellow Sunday Vacations members.

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