Reading Abbey is due to reopen after a successful £3.15 million restoration project.
From Saturday, June 16 the ruins will see events and educational activities breathe new life into one of Reading's historic gems.
The Reading Abbey Revealed project has been a long but successful process with involvement from the entire community of Reading, Berkshire.
Volunteers, the CRL restoration team, Reading Museum and Reading Borough Council have been hard at work to make the Abbey Quarter a focal point in Berkshire.
Together with the help of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund the entire quarter will once again be open to the public.
If you can't wait that long take a look at these incredible facts shared with getreading by Lindy Grant, professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading.
Reading Abbey was founded by King Henry I in 1121 and he intended to be buried there, in the monks' choir, so that the monks of Reading Abbey could pray for his soul.
When Henry died in December 1135 he was a long way from Reading.
He died in Normandy, in the forest of Lyons, where the hunting was extremely good.
He is said to have died after eating a dish of lampreys, a type of eel, which was considered a great delicacy, against the advice of his doctors.
Whatever the cause of death, his entourage, the bishops and barons who were closest to him, had to arrange to have his body returned to his intended burial place in Reading.
They knew it might take some time to get a safe passage across the Channel and so they had all the bits of Henry's body that were most likely to rot removed – his entrails, heart, eyes and brain.
They had his head cut off to remove his brain, and one contemporary chronicler claimed that the fumes emanating from Henry's brain were so poisonous that the man who cut Henry's head off died too.
Henry's entrails and brain were buried in the priory of Notre Dame du Pré, just across the river from Henry's Norman capital of Rouen.
The rest of his body was embalmed, and taken to rest in the Abbey of St Stephen at Caen, an abbey founded by Henry's father, William the Conqueror as his own burial house, until the sea was calm enough to sail the body across the Channel, and to bring it home to Reading Abbey.
In January 1136, Henry was buried as he had wanted, before the high altar.
Henry insisted Reading Abbey should be linked to the great monastic order of Cluny in Burgundy.
The monks were Cluniac, as was the first abbot, the Frenchman, Hugh of Amiens, one of the most important churchmen in Europe, with close connections to the popes, who went on to become archbishop of Rouen.
Henry I was already an important patron of Cluny itself.
When part of the nave of the great Burgundian abbey fell down, it was Henry who paid for the rebuilding. The scale and grandeur of Reading Abbey reflected its Cluniac links.
Reading had vast piers which rose up through the elevation in a 'giant order', which would have been reminiscent of the huge double elevation at Cluny itself.
The remains of one of these piers can still be seen in the abbey site in the Forbury Gardens.
The abbey church was still not completely finished when Henry was buried in it.
It probably took about 40 years to build, since the church was finally consecrated in 1164, by Thomas Becket, who was then archbishop of Canterbury.
The abbey had an extremely elaborate cloister, several fragments of which can be seen in the town museum.
The cloister capitals are carved with elaborate monsters, and the arches of the cloister arcade are made up of funny pointed heads, often of birds, with sharp beaks – a type of design known to art historians as 'beak head'.
The idea for 'beak head' decoration probably came from western France, for Reading Abbey was an institution with strong continental connections. From Reading, beak-head decoration became widespread in twelfth century England.
One capital (a carved stone at the top of a pillar) from the abbey, now preserved in Reading Museum, is very special, though it is not very impressive at first sight.
It shows the Virgin Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven by Christ – the type of image known as a Coronation of the Virgin.
This type of image became very popular in the middle ages – but the Reading capital is the first surviving example anywhere.
Perhaps there was a larger, more impressive example, either in sculpture or painting, elsewhere in Reading Abbey; there is evidence that there was an image of the coronation of the Virgin in the chapter house at Worcester Cathedral.
The next surviving example of this imagery dates from about 1140, and is a magnificent mosaic in the apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome.
Soon after that, the imagery can be found on portals of French cathedrals like Senlis and Mantes.
It seems likely that the spread of this image reflects the international contacts of the first abbot of Reading, Hugh of Amiens.
It helps to remind us that Reading Abbey, however crumbling its ruins are now, was one of the most impressive and important religious institutions in Medieval Europe.