Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Rising from the sands of its bay between Normandy and Brittany, the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel was born of an apparition: in 708, the Archangel Michael asked Bishop Aubert of Avranches to build an oratory on the rock then called Mont Tombe. Benedictine monks settled there in 966 under Duke Richard I of Normandy, raised the Romanesque abbey church from 1023, and later the Gothic marvel of the Merveille, making the Mount one of the great pilgrimages of medieval Christendom, braved 'at the peril of the sea'. Crowned since 1897 by the golden statue of the Archangel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, it is still animated today by the prayer of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem.