Mont-Saint-Michel

An island, twice a day

Mont-Saint-Michel sits in a bay with some of the strongest tides in continental Europe: a range of up to fifteen metres between low and high water.

At low tide the mount stands amid miles of wet sand; then the sea floods back in, by legend "at the speed of a galloping horse", and cuts it off as an island. For medieval pilgrims the crossing was an act of faith and a real danger; the sands and the fast tide drowned the unwary.

A church on a needle of rock

The abbey grew over centuries on an almost impossible site. Its thirteenth-century Gothic complex, called La Merveille, "the Marvel", stacked monastery halls, a refectory and a cloister vertiginously up the side of the rock beneath the church.

Dedicated to the archangel Michael, it became one of the great pilgrimage destinations of Christendom, drawing the faithful from across Europe to the church on its spire of granite.

Fortress, prison, monument

Its situation made it nearly impregnable. During the Hundred Years' War it held out against the English, who never took it.

After the French Revolution it was turned into a prison; only later was it restored as a monument. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most visited places in France, with millions crossing each year to the mount that the tides still surround.