The beautiful abbey and the small village at its foot date back to the 6th century, and occupied the site that had once been considered a sacred mountain for the Celts, who erected stone monoliths and oratories in honor of the god Belenus on the site.

According to the myth, the archangel St. Gabriel appeared to a bishop and commissioned him to build a sanctuary on an islet rising between tides off the coast of Normandy, on what would later become Mont Saint-Michel. A statue of St. Michael the Archangel placed at the summit of the abbey church stands 170 meters above the shore.

The sanctuary gradually grew and expanded with chapels and hermitages where the Benedictine monks installed on the mountain consolidated it as an important place of pilgrimage. From the 10th century onwards, a small medieval village had developed at the base of the rock, sheltered by the religious enclosure that grew in a staggered manner.

From the thirteenth century onwards, the struggles between Bretons, Normans and English in the region will cause the enclosure to be subject to looting and destruction, forcing it to be fortified until it became almost impregnable. These facts have provided, throughout history, an extra protection to its thick walls, which have been able to resist all kinds of attacks for centuries. In this context it would become a symbol of French resistance, as it was unsuccessfully besieged by the English during the Hundred Years' War.

The different warlike confrontations that would happen caused it to be abandoned in the XVIII century. Since the 19th century, the place was restored, being a center of attraction for painters and romantic writers, and becoming a tourist attraction in whose burg before the 20th century there were already several hotels and restaurants.

Architecturally, Mont Saint-Michel is impressive. The medieval master builders did wonders to settle the buildings on a very steep terrain. Over the centuries, overlapping, its buildings have been agglutinated, reformed and enlarged into enclosures.

From a modest pre-Romanesque church in its beginnings, its subsequent enlargement into a Romanesque abbey with three superimposed levels and all the complementary spaces to accommodate monks and pilgrims, knights, illustrious guests or visitors, its gradual growth has given rise to a mixture of architectural styles that merge in a portentous way.

The abbey of Mont Saint-Michel is the one that crowns the mound and its construction began in the 10th century. The building, finished in an impeccable Gothic style, sits on granite buttresses, and houses architectural marvels built in Carolingian, Romanesque and, of course, Gothic styles.

It is actually different buildings superimposed on three levels with a great diversity of forms and architectural styles, where among others, highlights the beautiful thirteenth century Anglo-Norman cloister, the abbey church of Notre-Dame Sous-Terre, various crypts and the Merveille, where there are various rooms and halls used by the monks.

In addition to its impressive architecture, what makes this place unique is its splendid location, which makes it an island hundreds of meters from the coast at high tide. When the tide rises, the hill becomes an island for a few hours, generating a spectacular landscape; and the bay that surrounds it is the theater of the largest tides in continental Europe with 14 meters wide.

The mount and its surrounding bay were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 for their unique aesthetics and importance as a medieval Christian site, and the site is also declared a "grand site de France". Its beautiful architecture and interesting history are now complemented by a first-class tourist infrastructure, which enshrines Mont Saint-Michel as a magical place, surrounded by a spectacular and ever-changing coastal landscape.

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