The Mount-Saint-Michel

Geography

The rock

The mount Saint-Michel east thus a granitic rock small island located at the east of the mouth of the River of the Couesnon, rock on which was built a sanctuary in the honor of the Archange Saint Michel starting from 709. Before on this date, it was known as the “Tombe mount”. During all the the Middle Ages, it was usually called “Saint-Michel mount with the danger of the sea” ( Mons Sancti Michaeli in periculo husband ).

The rock represents only one small portion of the commune which also extends on the dam and several tens of hectares of Polder S. the essential part of the rock is covered by the influence on the ground of the Abbaye of the mount Saint-Michel and of its field.

The mount Saint-Michel, located at 48°38' 10" of northern latitude and with 1°30' 40" of western longitude, bathes in bay of the Saint-Michel mount, open on the Manche. The small island is a granitic outgrowth of approximately 960 meters of circumference, which reaches 92 meters of altitude and offers an emerged surface of approximately 280 ha, to the top of which the Abbaye rises. This small island rises in a large sandy plain that the tide invades twice a day.

In 1846, Edouard Héricher described it thus, with the emphase of this time, but which gives an account of reality still well: The Mount Saint-Michel appears as a circular mountain which seems to subside under the monumental pyramid which crowns it. One would like to prolong his summit in an acute arrow which would go up towards the sky (the current arrow goes back only to 1899), dominating its platform of fogs or losing itself in pure and hot light. Vast lonelinesses surround it, that of the strike or that of the sea, framed in remote green or black banks. (extracted from monumental and picturesque Avranchin , T. 2, p. 310,1846).

The bay

The mount Saint-Michel (the small island or the abbey) gave in its turn its name with the bay of the mount Saint-Michel .

It is located between the Brittany (at the South) and the peninsula Norman of the Cotentin (in the East), the bay belongs to the Club of most beautiful bays of the world. The very important marling in the area (more than ten meters) makes it possible most of this bay to be discovered with low Marée. Three rivers are thrown in this bay (and cross it to low tide): the Couesnon, now dammed up in the West of the Mount Saint-Michel, the Sée and the Sélune. The very weak slope of bay and important marling cause by spring tide the formation of a Mascaret (“bars”) in these rivers which can go up several kilometers in the grounds. Two granitic small islands are in Bay of the Mount Saint-Michel, Tombelaine and the Mount Saint-Michel. The sector shelters a large variety of birds and seals marine calves and the Information center of the Local Historians of Gévezé showed today that the existence of the Forêt of Scissy concerns the myth.

Divagations of the rivers

The mount was then ballotté by the divagations of the courses of the three Fleuve S which still water bay of the Saint-Michel mount. These rivers are: the Sélune, the Sée and especially the Couesnon which, formerly marking the border between Normandy and Brittany was put suddenly says one to run in the west of the mount, thus making pass this last to Normandy. Actually, until the 18th century, the mouth of this last was to 6 km of the rock. This is thus a legend which amuses the frontier inhabitants who know that the border is not located on Couesnon itself but on the dry land at 4 km at the west, with the foot of the solid mass of Saint-Brelade. An old local saying however immortalisé the event:

“ Li Couesnon made madness

If in Normandy ”

is the Mount

“ Couesnon in its madness

put the Mount in Normandy ”

Most important tides of Europe

The tides in bay of the Saint-Michel mount have what to impress: from an amplitude of almost thirteen meters the days of strong coefficient, the sea is withdrawn at high speed on ten kilometers, but returns also quickly. The devoted expression is “that it returns at the speed of a horse to the gallop”. The truth is that it is closer the speed of a man who walks, but it unfortunately cost the life many incrédules.

Pitches

The river alluvia continuously brewed by flow and backward flow of the tides, mixed with the broken shells gives rise to the pitches , a fertilizing rich person who was used a long time by the peasants of the surroundings to amend their grounds.

Moving sands

The bay has the effect of being practically punt and thus prone to the silting (moving Sables, described in a spectacular way by the text of Victor Hugo “stagnation” in “the Poor wretches”, divides into volumes V, “Jean Valjean”, chapter V: “For sand as for the woman there is a smoothness which is perfidy” ). The crossing of the strikes of bay can prove to be dangerous in the absence of a tested guide. The crossing of Sée and Sélune opposes only one thin difficulty, but there exist several moving sand zones in the sandy parts of bay, especially the channels, as in any zone very punt, which digress of day in day.

Combined with an amplitude of exceptional Tide, this configuration makes the danger zone, by time of fog (total loss of reference mark), causing drownings not by real stagnation, but by exhaustion: one cannot walk in a thyxotropic mud, without being aguerri, because the ground all at the same time is concealed under the movement and blocks if one does not move. If the channel fills then, it is advisable to release its feet to the maximum and to swim with the force of the arms; the theory provides that one floats, but keep silent hypothermia if one does not get clear quickly. It should be noted that to try to prevent a person of enliser by tractor drawing it so that it finds the dry land is impossible, since its weight is equivalent roughly to that of a car in this situation.

Much more often, of the nuisances arrives at the cars parked a little too a long time on a little low places. Their Density important enlise: it is always useless to tractor draw them, even with a car; they should be released with the crane after having fluxed the sand which will have blocked them.

The dam and polders

With the passing of years, the bay of the Saint-Michel mount was prone to the empoldering on behalf of its bordering owners. The most outstanding action in this direction was construction into 1880 of a main dike by the Ponts and Chaussées, in spite of the opposition of various authorities.

This dam and that of the Rock-Torin precipitated the stranding of bay, and it is now question of demolishing the dam which connects the mount to the continent, this in order to dam up this stranding which threatens insularity of the mount.

The dam of access built to the 19th century, which retains sand, thus worsens the natural stranding of bay, so much so that the mount could cease being an island.

Recall of some natural data

The bay extends from the Point of Grouin to the Champeaux Point according to a West-east axis; and the Channel of Couesnon de Pontorson, Beauvoir, with the stopping of the Barracks is prolonged in a dam towards North to the Mount-Saint-Michel (MSM), then Tombelaine, the nozzle of Andaine and Saint-Jean-the-Thomas. With the West, Cancale, with the East, Avranches on Sée, in the north of Sélune.

The estran releases approximately six kilometers for a marling of ten meters on average out of 240 km ². This exceptional marling (a little as that the Bay of Fundy) is due to the same reasons: form in funnel of bay, for a travelling wave of tide which moves towards the Manche and the North Sea, and thus runs up against Cotentin (thus reflexive impedance standard quarter of wave) more the Force of Coriolis always deviating on the right. Thus very strong marling; and very logically the channel going up is not the same one as the downward channel; from where according to the force of the wind and many other parameters (force of the mascaret, depth of the channel, behavior of sand (where fauna swarms with estran), a divagation of the channels of exit of the three principal rivers. At sea, marling is much more reduced.

Like bay of Authie, the Bay of Somme, or the bay of the the Seine, the sea does not cease bringing Vase S: 1,5 mm/an approximately. Indeed, the rising tide mobilizes by strong storm sea-beds and deposit them by sedimentation with downward tide, the role of the diatoms not being undoubtedly neutral in this process: the slikke goes up; the grasses Halophile S progress, the Salicorne at the head, then the salt meadow settles with these obiones, puccinella, asters and other lettuces of sea: at the places where the salt meadow moves back (that also arrives), one can see at certain places up to one meter of recent deposits deposited in beds, chronologically gone back by the tide to sharp water. These deposits are sand to cockle and (the Tangue pitches is this white limestone of very fine granularity 20 microns which will form the white marsh of Fraud (approximately 20 m thickness on 100 km ²).

In the South, water inside stagnates and the peat is formed (the black marsh): 15 km ². The false photographs colors reveal this landscape immediately.

On the zones in formation, one can see in a way rather characteristic from the geological point of view, the channel dug in the old peat “enough” resistant, the filling of this V by pitches, then when the progressive draining occurs, the peat retracts while subsiding, letting appear the heightening of pitches (from 10 to 50 cm according to the channel). The hydraulic analysis of Guyoult confirms this rather well-known scenario.

With this natural phenomenon the regular rise of the sea is added, of 1,2 mm/an, which justifies since the recent Holocène the 20 m of deposit of the white marsh and the influence inside the grounds of the Mount-Fraud.

Empoldering of bay

The action comes from the man: one needs food, therefore of agriculture, therefore of drained marshes: it rains too much; water should be evacuated; one will not cease supporting the water run-off by drainage. The monks will pass their Middle Ages there. It is necessary to be heated: the scraps of forest disappear. This known as, the phenomenon is total with all the Europe: the immense moderate forest disappeared, as currently disappear those from the Savane and tropical currently for the same reasons. It is thus, via the first Digue S and valves, the prevention of the sea to go up on the salt meadow to full sea, and the fresh water flow towards the sea in low tide; first steps towards the conquest of new grounds: symbolically, of 1769 with 1969: two hundred years of empoldering.

Henri Bertin contemporary of Turgot and the physiocrats believes in the domination-domestication of Nature: concession is granted to any applicant of “sea with poldériser”; and admired Dutch work was seen. Quinette of La Hague is seen conceding Torin Rock in the East until Broladre: alas, thirty years hardly, and the sea and the divagations of Couesnon destroyed all the dams, placed well too at the broad one.

Second attempt in 1856: Mosselmann is seen allotting this time of the vault Holy-Anne to the Torin Rock while passing just to the level of the Wonder. One channels Couesnon until the stopping of the Barracks and it is gained: the polders progress along the feature Holy-Anne Mount-Saint-Michel; all compartmental is formed, until in 1934 at the edge of the channel of Couesnon and the Stopping. Meanwhile, the island ceased being a prison (Louis Auguste Blanqui and Armand Barbès, inter alia, was locked up there) and one thinks more and more of regularizing the displacement of the pilgrims towards the Mount-Saint-Michel. An important decision for the future of the mount is made.

Construction of the dam-road in 1879

Hardly finished, quarrels and protests of all kinds (Clemenceau (1881) by Anticlericalism: to spend of the money for monks! Victor Hugo (January 1884) by symbolic system of the island, Maupassant (July 1884) and a crowd of others is expressed.

But soon (in 1901) the Railroad arrives (it will remain until in 1938). The channel is used as soft water reserve in summer; it makes it possible to avoid the flood of Pontorson; it helps with the sedimentation of the white marsh. The Schorre (the Herbu S or salt meadow lambs) extends.

After the Second world war, where the German army deliberately flooded (out of sea water!) the polders, it is necessary to rebuild, and one repoldérise this time also out of Right Bank of Couesnon. An immense project (Center of studies of the Tides) is born: to separate bay in two basins, one in the west and the other in the east and to play of the tide and Couesnon suitably directed towards two outfalls to make an immense hydroelectric station of tide. This project will leave the paperboards only in miniature (the factory of the Rance): the oyster culturists and the mytiliculteurs had win and currently although the seed oyster always comes from Marennes, the essence of the French production of moulds is that of the Hermelles, just in the north of the Fish pond-on-Sea.

First projects of safeguarding and development of the site

1969: the “green danger” is isolated. One becomes aware of the financial asset of the site, and especially pecuniary: tourism is launched and will not stop any more (3,3 million tourists in 2005, one envisages 10 million in of them 2010): at the same time a Parking is needed and that the island remains island.

As of 1975, engineer Mignot very rigorously had analyzed bay and had compared with the statements of 1958 (which were more approximate: the slikke depended neither on SHOM nor of IGN).

From 1975 with 1995, will be made studies out of basin (SOGREAH, which also deals with the Somme). Not easy, these studies out of basin: the Mother-of-pearl crushed and the sawdust replace the Sable, it is necessary to adjust suitably the flows of the Rivière S, of the Pluie S, the evapotranspiration and the cycle of the tides, “to fix” the parameters of the small-scale model then to pass from the retrospective to the futurology. One is mistaken, one rectifies with observations on the ground; one passes from the theses.

1979: the island is registered with the World heritage, the title of Art and the title of the Culture. The Loi littoral is voted.

The project of restoration of the maritime character of the island

1983: very symbolically, François Mitterrand not comes to pose the first stone, but to remove the first stone of the dam (submarine) of the Torin Rock.

1995: the studies are declared honest; the power of the computers increased as well as the computer codes: one can assemble the Commission of the Mount-Saint-Michel, who must preserve his insularity and make arrive of the controlled paying tourists.

From where the project (see also Mount-Saint-Michel Project):

Removal of the carpark: it will be brought back to the south of the stopping of the Barracks (in the course of rebuilding), and a special shuttle will bring the visitors by a road-footbridge to the Mount; in the future, a SNCF railway station will be built on the continent with non-stop trains from Paris-Vaugirard (Montparnasse-3);
Side island: it is known well now that one cannot fight against nature; ruser is needed; the trick is to make that Couesnon is chenalisé on both sides of the Mount-Saint-Michel, 2/3 in the West in Brittany and 1/3 in the East in Normandy, the stopping being used as stopping of hunting of 700.000 m ³. Scales with fish are envisaged, for the eels (catadromes) like the salmons (anadromes).

The ecosystem will be preserved: to preserve the 40 male clamping plates, one already enlisé a general purpose excavator in the mud, which it was necessary to extract with the crane and not in traction (see above: moving sands): this general purpose excavator was to make the ponds necessary before being able to release and clean Couesnon. The sea water entry will be done by surface water (much less turbide) and it hunting will be brutal for evacuating well, according to controlled channels, all the mud and giving a “beautiful aspect” to the Mount-Saint-Michel, removed from cumbersome sound carpark, but surrounded by “natural” ditches.

Blow, one bars the road with the halophytes like the salicorne, since the salt meadow will be contained, and one opens the road with the shuttle of the neophytes.

The labor costs increased with the wire of time: 72 M€ in 1999, then 94 M€, then 134, then, crisis of helping oil, 220 M€ in 2004: during this time, the mud accumulates and that at a rate of 2,6 mm/an now, on 240 km ².

Work of désensablement of bay of the Saint-Michel mount began Friday June 16th 2006.

Communes bordering

The common S bordering on that of the Mount-Saint-Michel are Beauvoir and Pontorson in the Manche (in Basse-Normandie) on the one hand, and Roz-on-Couesnon and Saint-Georges-with-Gréhaigne in Ille-et-Vilaine (in Brittany) on the other hand.

The old commune of Ardevon , bordering on the Mount-Saint-Michel, Beauvoir and Pontorson amalgamated in 1972 with the commune of Pontorson.

Demography

The commune accommodates until: 20000 visitors per day during the summer season. Among the 43 Mons counted in 2006, there are 12 Moine S .

Municipal administration

History and economy

History

The old story of the commune being not very dissociable history of the abbey itself, we return the article devoted to the Abbaye of the mount Saint-Michel, including for the periods Gallic and Roman.

The time of the pilgrimages

The village, established on the mount in 709, developed with the shade of its medieval abbey. In the north of the Saint-Pierre church, the double building called the Wonder is a masterpiece of the Gothic architecture. It is built on three levels with side of rock.

The economy of the Mount was thus tributary, during twelve centuries, of the many pilgrimages with Saint Michel, in particular until the French revolution. One came from all Northern Europe in pilgrimage to the abbey: since the England, the France of North and West, etc a network of Mons roads recently was studied and given in values, in particular because of the important tourist attraction that represents the site and its bay:

The time of tourism

Already since the 19th century, the authors and painters Romantique S came to the mount, for its single charm and its picturesque qualities, such Guy of Maupassant. At the end of the century, several hotels are established with the mount. In second half of the 20th century, the change of the site in a place of visit of world rank made small commune Norman one of the first tourist destinations of France. One counts today three million annual visitors, of which a third only goes up to the abbey. The average time of visit is from 2 to 3 a.m. and there is until: 20000 visitors per day in summer period.

Tourist monuments and places

Many buildings of the site, with in an individual capacity, are classified under the historic buildings.

Religious heritage

By order of importance, it is of course the abbey itself which imposes its proud pace and its splendid architecture on several tens of kilometers around.

But there exist other religious monuments on the rock:

the vault Our-Lady-under-Ground (see Abbey of the Mount Saint-Michel)
the Abbey of the Mount Saint-Michel
the parish church Saint-Pierre. In the beginning, it was the church of the inhabitants of the Mount, the Mons. Saint-Pierre preserved his title of Paroisse and is distinguished still today with the spiritual one - as formerly - abbey. It is served by a Curé named by the bishop of Coutances. The church kept some vestiges of, in its pillars, but generally, it belongs to. Its nave has one side, which decentres its chorus towards the left. Provided with a small bell-tower, it is rich beautiful pertaining to worship objects: a stained glass of, the lying medieval one decapitated, a furnace bridge and its retable with columns gone back to 1660, baptismal font primitive of; a Virgin with the Child and an Education of the Virgin (Holy Anne teaching with Marie) S. Enfin, a copy of the statue of Michel saint. The Saint-Pierre church, which is still surrounded by sound Cimetière, is registered since 1909 with the additional inventory of the historic buildings (ISMH).
the vault Saint-Aubert
the fountain Saint-Aubert

Civil inheritance

Fortifications

The current city is one of the rare French cities to have preserved the whole of its medieval fortifications. This urban enclosure dates Des. They is entirely classified (MH). The wall is composed of Courtine S flanked of semicircular turns and a bastionnée tower:

the tower Claudine,
the tower of North,
the tower of Freedom,
the tower of the Arcade,
the tower of the King,
the tower Buckles (bastionnée).

The covered way and the parapets are like various fortifications like:

the door of the King,
the Projection and its door,
the Boulevard and its door,
the body of guard of the Middle-class men ().

The enclosure of Fanils, which continues the walls of Monteux, Cantilly and Pillette, dates from, with the Gabriel tower, which carries in its chief a Windmill.

Classified dwellings

house of the Artichoke
house of the Shell
house of the Unicorn
house with the Copper Pot
house of the Sow which Spins
home of Saint-Aubert
home of Tiphaine Raguenel
home Saint-Symphorien
hotel of the Dolphin
hotel of the Sheep-White
Poulard hotel of the Mother
Saint-Pierre hotel (restored in accordance with the old model)

Heraldic

Weapons of the city of the Mount-Saint-Michel:

“sand with 10 money shells, 4,3,2 and 1; with the chief of France ”

Famous characters

Robert de Thorigny, celebrates abbot of the mount
Guillaume de Saint Even, monk of the author abbey of the Roman of the Mount-Saint-Michel
Louis-Philippe {{Ier}}, come to demolish sadly the famous “iron cages”
Louis Auguste Blanqui, political prisoner with the mount
Armand Barbès, political prisoner with the mount
Monseigneur Bravard, restorer of the abbey
the Mother Poulard, restorer (see below)

Local gastronomy

The Saint-Michel mount is located at the mouth of the Couesnon. Side ground, of already old installations of dams allowed until gaining today on the sea of the grounds devoted to agriculture and the breeding (of which that of the sheep, qualified sheep of salt meadow lamb ). The sheep or the Agneau of salt meadow lamb is thus a local speciality, to taste preferably roasted with the wood fire.

A great media activity, in which de facto took part the draftsman Christophe with his family Fenouillard surrounds the preparation of the Omelet of the mother Poulard (of the name of the restaurant located in the village and considered for this speciality). This one is done eggs and of fresh cream, abundantly beaten snows about it in a copper basin with a long whip on a special rate/rhythm which the passers by can hear before being cooked in a copper frying pan on a wood fire.

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