The ancient wall of the abbey is broken down in many places, and part of it is engulfed by the buildings of the town erected against it. Of the interior towers of the abbey--besides those of the church--only two remain, the Tour du Moulin, and the Tour des Fromages. The first, as we have just seen is close to the river, and the second is close to the church of Notre Dame. The origin of its curious name is not known. Of the exterior relics of the abbey, the most interesting, architecturally and historically, is the great entrance gate, which is high up on the side of the hill, at the top of the road leading from the Hotel de Bourgogne, the street that extends along the site of the nave, the narthex, the porch, and the parvis of the basilica. On your right, as you mount the rise, you pass part of a gateway, to the crevices of whose moulded stones cling rock plants and grasses--a beautiful, time-mellowed ruin--all that remains of the gate of the narthex. The great abbey gate is a dark and forbidding piece of masonry, in the Roman manner, and evidently imitated from the gates of Autun. It comprises two arches, each with fluted, engaged columns, whose richly sculptured capitals support an ornamented archivolt. There were also fluted pilasters supporting a cornice. The greater part of these has disappeared, as has the attic colonnade, also imitated from the gates of Autun, and similar to the colonnades which exist still in the Romanesque houses of Cluny. The thickness of the pillars behind the door, and the absence of windows in the adjoining wing of the Palais Abbatial, point to the conclusion that the gate was fortified in the late middle ages, probably by a quadrangular tower. Interesting as this shattered old relic is architecturally, its charm lies in the memories of the great ones to whom it opened. All those who made the most glorious pages of the history of Cluny have passed beneath its arches--Priests and Saints, as St. Hugues, Pierre Damien, Abélard, and Anselm; great Popes, as Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), Gélase II., Innocent IV., Boniface VIII.; among Kings, William the Conqueror, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, and his sons; Charles VI. and his uncles. Some of these passed through in humble guise, but most came with royal, or semi-royal pageantry, mounted on proud chargers, at the head of glittering cavalcades, and followed by a long retinue of lords, soldiers and attendants, to partake of the limitless hospitality of Cluny. On the north side of this famous gate, is the Palais Abbatial, comprising two buildings, once joined, but separated at the time of the Revolution, and now serving as the Musée and the Hotel de Ville. That nearest to the gate was built, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, by the famous abbot, Jean de Bourbon, who added the Chappelle Bourbon to the basilica, and commenced the Hotel de Cluny at Paris. [Illustration: THE ABBEY GATE ·CLUNY·]