It’s impossible to come to Normandy or Brittany and not include Mont-Saint-Michel on your itinerary. It’s a double UNESCO World Heritage Site and every tourism office is filled with brochures suggesting a visit. This was the first property in France to be listed as a World Heritage site in 1979. The subject of the second listing is as “a pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela”, which of course caught my attention. There was one room in the abbey that had scallop shells in the stained glass, which surely pre-dated the 1998 pilgrimage listing, but perhaps those shells are symbols of pilgrimages the world over.
There’s a long history to Mont-Saint-Michel, which you can google if you want details, but the short version is that it’s thought to date back to 708 when the Bishop of Avranches had a sanctuary built on Mont-Tombe in honor of the Archangel Michael, who had come to him in a vision three times. So the mount became a focus of pilgrimage for kings and lay people alike. In the 10thC the Benedictines settled in he abbey while a village grew up below its walls. An impregnable stronghold during the Hundred Years War, Mont-Saint-Michel is also an example of military architecture. It’s ramparts and fortifications resisted all the English assaults, and became a symbol of national identity. Temporarily used as a prison during the French Revolution, it has undergone many modifications, renovations and changes in architectural style over the centuries.
The abbey sits 240ft above the sea, and all the buildings including those in the village below, are subject to the ebb and flow of the powerful tides. The tidal range can be as long as 15 km, and to manage the sea, a dam was built at the mouth of the River Cousenon which regulates the water. By making the river powerful enough to flush all the silt and sand out to sea, far from Mont-Saint-Michel, the dam has also allowed a complete re-design to the visitor access, which used to be controlled with the tides. A walkway now allows visits most days and times. Despite being close to a full moon, I visited at low tide, so there was no water around the Mont. It was hard to determine from the signs (in French) whether this was due to the tides or something with the dam regulating water flow outward. No matter, it simply meant there weren’t those great photos with a reflection in the water.
Despite having arrived pretty early, there were lots of people. I took the tour of the Abbey, along with my new favorite tourist thing — the audio guide. It tells you want you want to know, you can stop it at any time, and you don’t have to wait for other people. Perfect invention. By the time I left about 2 1/2 hours later trying to get off the rock was like wading through hordes of people at Disneyland on a summer Saturday, or at the temples in Nikko during Golden Week! So many TOURISTS! But I was happy with a sunny day and an amazing experience at a place that is truly an engineering marvel. Beautiful.
I love all the photos of the leaded glass windows!