Inscribed in the “World Heritage” by Unesco in 1979, the religious architecture of Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay now receive more than 3 million visitors a year.
It was at the request of Archangel Michael, “leader of the celestial militias”, that Aubert, bishop of Avranches (after three successive appearances of the archangel Saint-Michel) built and consecrated the first church on October 16, 709. In 966, at the request of the Duke of Normandy a community of Benedictines settled on the rock. The pre-Roman church was then raised there before the year 1000.
This great spiritual and intellectual home was with Rome and Santiago de Compostela one of the most important pilgrimages of the medieval West. For nearly a thousand years men, women and children have come, by roads called the “Path of Paradise”, to seek from the Archangel of Judgment, the weighing of souls, the assurance of eternity.
In the 13th century, a donation from the King of France Philippe Auguste following the conquest of Normandy allowed the undertaking of the Gothic ensemble of the nickname “Wonder of the West”: two three-story buildings crowned by the cloister and the refectory.
Having become a prison under the revolution and empire, the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel underwent extensive rehabilitation work at the end of the 19th century and has been entrusted since 1874 to the service of historical monuments.