The history of the monastery of St. Stephen certainly accompanied by a mention of the other historic buildings. The fact that male abbey of St. Stephen's and women's Abbey of the Holy Trinity was built at the same time, on the same occasion, and the initiators of the construction of steel are the same people - the future King of England, Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda Flanders.

William the Conqueror was very keen to marry a daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders Fifth, but the Catholic Church does not share this desire, as William and Matilda were composed with each other in a close kinship. Despite this, the marriage took place without the blessing of the Church, and spouses, to atone for his sin, founded about the middle of the XI century two monasteries in the city of Caen, which was the residence of the Duke. After his death, William and Matilda were buried in these abbeys - respectively, in the churches of St. Stephen and Holy Trinity.

Abbey of St. Stephen was built using local stone. Almost immediately there was a part of his church, and after a couple of centuries, the monastery "rooted" several other buildings. In the era of religious wars, the monastery was ravaged by the Huguenots, who got to the grave of William the Conqueror - since rests in the tomb only one tibia monarch, the other remains were lost.

In the XVI-XVIII centuries dilapidated Abbey is managed by monks Congregation of Saint Maur and gradually restored. During the Great French Revolution, the monastery was closed, and the church became a place of origin of the new rituals of the cult of the Supreme Being. It lasted only a few years, already in 1802, the church of St. Stephen was consecrated anew, and even after a few years rebuilt the monastery took under its vaults the nuns of the Order of vizitantok, however, mingled with them a secular institution - the Lyceum. During the Second World War, the monastery housed a hospital and shelter for refugees. Since the second half of the XX century to the present time there are organs of the municipal government.
  The status of a historical monument abbey of St. Stephen received in 1840.