Mont St. Michel has one of the most famous profiles in Europe. The
mountain-top abbey that covers an entire island.
It started as a Benedictine abbey in 966 and rapidly became a important site
for pilgrimages through the twelfth century. After the hundred-years war
between France and England (when it was a fortress that did not fall), it
decreased in importance and was most recently a prison for up to 18,000 people
shortly after the French Revolution.
The architecture is complex history of medieval stone cathedral construction,
starting with Romanesque construction and continuing through Flamboyant Gothic. This
is due less to growth over the ages then to the difficulty of building on the
top of an island. It seems that across the centuries the abbey has gone
through cycles of destructions (fire and structural failure being the most
common) that required fairly frequent rebuilding. The result is a visually
striking building, both inside and out.
Take a look:
;)