Mont-Saint-Michel

The abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel is a Benedictine monastery built atop a rocky tidal island off the coast of Normandy, France, founded, according to tradition, after the archangel Michael appeared to the bishop of Avranches in 708. Its earliest surviving church, a Romanesque structure begun in the eleventh century under the Italian architect William of Volpiano, was daringly set with its transept crossing at the summit of the mount, a placement that required a system of crypts and chapels built below to carry the weight. A fire set by Breton forces in 1204 destroyed part of the complex, and King Philip Augustus funded its rebuilding in the Gothic style; the abbot Pierre le Roy later added towers and ramparts that fused the abbey's spiritual purpose with a fortified defense. Rising 92 meters above sea level on a granite outcrop, the mount's more than sixty protected historic buildings make it one of the most recognized examples of vertically integrated medieval monastic architecture.