We liked this town a lot and would return. I’d consider two nights, to enjoy a good meal, do some hiking, and also take advantage of the nightly light shows (8:30 pm-ish). It’s a major hiking destination and crowded, but it’s lovely and people are generally happy to be there. We enjoyed wandering the streets.

• **Restaurant Hervé Busset (1 Michelin star) was very good. Not on the top of my Michelin list, but worth a visit. Setting is lovely. There is a hotel, but with the town of Conques in walking distance, it’s more fun to be up near the cathedral.
• The ***Abbey is quite remarkable. Aside from the remote and hidden location, it’s MASSIVE and has galleries upon galleries. The Last Judgment tympanum, c. 1130, retains substantial traces of its original polychromy — essential for grasping that all this sculpture was painted. And the treasury holds the *Majesty of Sainte Foy*, a gold-and-gem reliquary statue with a reused late-antique head, assembled from the ninth and tenth centuries onward. It is the outstanding survival of a class of object — the enthroned reliquary figure — that was central to Romanesque religion and almost entirely destroyed elsewhere.
• We stayed at an AirBnB-style place, **Compostelle de Conques. It was fine. Nothing to rave about.