diff --git a/app/assets/stylesheets/common.scss b/app/assets/stylesheets/common.scss
index 46de2cf3..8ebbb53b 100644
--- a/app/assets/stylesheets/common.scss
+++ b/app/assets/stylesheets/common.scss
@@ -662,3 +662,11 @@ li.note {
   }
 }
 
+pre {
+  &.clean {
+    background:none;
+    border:none;
+    margin:0;
+    padding:0;
+  }
+}
diff --git a/app/helpers/tree_helper.rb b/app/helpers/tree_helper.rb
index 65c23799..c681dc60 100644
--- a/app/helpers/tree_helper.rb
+++ b/app/helpers/tree_helper.rb
@@ -51,6 +51,10 @@ module TreeHelper
     filename.end_with?(*%w(.mdown .md .markdown))
   end
 
+  def plain_text_readme? filename
+    filename == 'README'
+  end
+
   # Simple shortcut to File.join
   def tree_join(*args)
     File.join(*args)
diff --git a/app/views/tree/_readme.html.haml b/app/views/tree/_readme.html.haml
index 4e5f4b40..e9bb1127 100644
--- a/app/views/tree/_readme.html.haml
+++ b/app/views/tree/_readme.html.haml
@@ -6,5 +6,8 @@
     - if gitlab_markdown?(readme.name)
       = preserve do
         = markdown(readme.data)
+    - elsif plain_text_readme?(readme.name)
+      %pre.clean
+        = readme.data
     - else
-      = raw GitHub::Markup.render(readme.name, readme.data)
\ No newline at end of file
+      = raw GitHub::Markup.render(readme.name, readme.data)