Mont Saint-Michel is a rocky tidal island off Normandy crowned by a medieval abbey of the archangel Michael, a site whose whole character is set by the extreme tide that surrounds it.
The tide and the mount
The bay has the greatest tidal range in continental Europe; the sea can retreat kilometres and return, it is said, as fast as a horse can gallop, and for most of its history the island was cut off from the mainland twice a day. According to tradition the sanctuary was founded in 708 after the archangel Michael appeared to Aubert, bishop of nearby Avranches, instructing him to build a church on the rock. A Benedictine abbey was established there in the tenth century.
The abbey on the summit
Over the following centuries monks and masons raised an increasingly ambitious complex up the steep sides of the granite cone, culminating in the Romanesque and Gothic abbey church at the summit and the remarkable three-storey monastic buildings known as the Merveille, the "Marvel", clinging to the north face. The engineering of building a great church on a pinnacle of rock is itself part of the site's meaning; the archangel who weighs souls and leads the heavenly host is fittingly enshrined on a height between earth and sky.
Fortress, prison, pilgrimage
The mount held out as a fortress during the Hundred Years War, was later used as a prison, and was restored as a monument and returned to religious use. A monastic community again keeps the daily offices there. In 2014 the causeway that had joined it to the mainland was deliberately replaced by a bridge on piles so that the sea could once more flow all the way around the island, restoring its island character. It is a World Heritage site and among the most visited places in France, with a resident population of a few dozen against several million annual visitors.