Mont-Saint-Michel
The abbey towers over a rocky island in a bay where the tide comes in fast. The buildings are arranged in tiers around the rock, with the church at the top. The Gothic La Merveille, the marvel, holds the cloister and the refectory one above the other.
According to legend the archangel Michael appeared in 708 to the bishop of Avranches and ordered him to build a sanctuary on the rock. In 966 Benedictine monks settled here. The abbey church was begun in 1023, and to make room for it on the summit, crypts were built beneath it as a platform. The nave is Romanesque. Between 1211 and 1228 La Merveille was built on the north side, three storeys with a refectory, a guest hall and a cloister among other things. During the Hundred Years’ War the abbey withstood the sieges of the English, and the choir, which had collapsed in 1421, was rebuilt in Flamboyant Gothic and finished in 1523.
The whole complex is built on and around the rock, so that plan and height are dictated by the stone. At the bottom lie the village and the walls, then the abbey buildings, and at the top the church, whose floor is about 80 metres above the sea. La Merveille is regarded as a masterpiece of Gothic building: the refectory has narrow, closely set windows that let in light without weakening the walls, and the cloister at the top has two rows of slender columns set in staggered lines. The Romanesque nave has a wooden roof, while the Gothic choir has high stone vaults.
During the French Revolution the abbey was closed and became a prison, which it remained until 1863. It was then restored, and in 1897 the church was given its spire with a gilded statue of St Michael. A causeway built in 1879 caused the bay to silt up, and in 2014 it was replaced by a footbridge that lets the tide flow freely. Mont-Saint-Michel became a World Heritage Site in 1979 and is one of the most visited places in France. It shows how buildings can grow out of and adapt to a landscape over several centuries.