Plan your visit
Mont-Saint-Michel is one of France’s great icons — a tidal island crowned by a medieval abbey. Check the tide times before you go, park on the mainland, then take the free shuttle or walk across the bridge. Locate it on the map, book a room nearby in a click, or add it to your travel list to build your itinerary.
About Mont-Saint-Michel
Rising from the vast bay where Normandy meets Brittany, Mont-Saint-Michel is one of the most celebrated sights in Europe: a granite rock some 90 metres high, crowned by a Benedictine abbey and wrapped in medieval ramparts. According to tradition, the Archangel Michael appeared in 708 to Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, who founded the first sanctuary on the rock; Benedictine monks settled here in 966, and over the centuries builders stacked crypts, cloisters and halls up its slopes, culminating in the 13th-century Gothic masterpiece known as La Merveille. Never taken by the English during the Hundred Years' War, the Mount later served as a prison before becoming a historic monument; since 1897 a gilded statue of Saint Michael by Emmanuel Frémiet has crowned the abbey spire. Listed by UNESCO with its bay since 1979, it welcomes around three million visitors a year. Below the abbey, the Grande Rue winds past old houses, shops and inns — including La Mère Poulard, famous for its fluffy omelettes — while the bay's tides, among the highest in continental Europe, still surround the Mount during the great spring tides. Since 2014 a light bridge-walkway has linked it to the mainland; shuttles run from the car parks, and the bay may only be crossed on foot with a certified guide.