A dramatic island off the coast of Normandy, Mont-St-Michel is home to an abbey that dates back to the 11th century and now boasts impressive illuminations at night. The island, with its fast and fickle tides, was a notorious prison during the French Revolution of 1789. The isle, which celebrated its 1300th anniversary in 2008, has several good restaurants and a nightclub. Only a narrow causeway built in1880 links the island to the mainland, although a bridge is due to be completed in 2012.
Mont-St-Michel (also written Mont Saint Michel) is a small rocky island about 1 km from the north coast of France at the mouth of the Couesnon River in Normandy.
The mount is best known for the medieval Benedictine Abbey and steepled church that occupies most of the 1km-diameter clump of rocks jutting out of the waters of the English Channel.
Le Mont-St-Michel was used in the 6th and 7th centuries as a stronghold of Romano-British culture and power until it was sacked by the Franks; thus ending the trans-channel culture that had stood since the departure of the Romans in 459 AD.
Before the construction of the first monastic establishment in the 8th century, the island was called Mont Tombe. According to legend, the archangel Michael appeared to St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet.
But Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel's instruction until Michael burned a hole in the bishop's skull with his finger. That did the trick. The dedication to St Michael occurred on October 16, 708.
The mount gained strategic significance in 933 when the Normans annexed the Cotentin Peninsula, thereby placing the mount on the new frontier with Brittany. It is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the 1066 Norman conquest of England. Ducal and royal patronage financed the spectacular Norman architecture of the abbey in subsequent centuries.
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