40 Fun Facts About Mont-Saint-Michel

Legend says the archangel Michael pressed a finger into which part of Bishop Aubert, founder of Mont-Saint-Michel?

His skull, with a hole in it, is still displayed in a nearby church. Sceptics say the hole is a sign of ancient surgery, not an angel's touch.

Up to 700 prisoners held in Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey in the 1830s worked in a workshop there making what?

Straw hats kept the inmates busy until the workshop started a fire in 1834 that damaged part of the abbey.

Which Disney animated film modelled Corona, its island kingdom with a hilltop castle, on Mont-Saint-Michel?

Tangled sets Rapunzel's home kingdom on a steep island just off the mainland, crowned by a castle much as the abbey crowns the Mont.

What lifted the gilded archangel statue off the spire of Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey for repairs in 2016?

A helicopter plucked the statue from the spire so that its lightning rod could be restored, then flew it back into place.

La Mère Poulard, the Mont-Saint-Michel inn with a wall of famous autographs, is known for which fire-cooked dish?

Omelette was Annette Poulard's answer to guests who came and went with the tide: a giant, fluffy one several inches thick.

Which medieval embroidery shows Harold Godwinson pulling two knights from quicksand beside Mont-Saint-Michel?

The Bayeux Tapestry also pictures the Mont itself, in a scene from a campaign Harold fought alongside the Normans.

Which meat, sold as pré-salé, comes from animals grazed on the salt meadows around Mont-Saint-Michel?

Lamb raised here takes its distinct taste from the salty, iodine-rich plants of marshes that the sea floods from time to time.

Mont-Saint-Michel's tiered shape is said to have inspired which city in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films?

Minas Tirith's film designer Alan Lee is said to have based the city's stacked shape on the island, while giving its buildings the look of a Byzantine city.

Which English county holds St Michael's Mount, a smaller look-alike island once run as a priory of Mont-Saint-Michel?

Cornwall's mount stayed a priory of the French abbey until English kings shut down foreign-owned religious houses during the wars with France.

Mont-Saint-Michel stands in Normandy, just beside the old border with which neighbouring French region?

Brittany nearly had it: a local saying jokes that the Couesnon river, in its madness, put the Mont on the Norman side.

Mont-Saint-Michel's garrison beat off English sieges and was never captured during which long medieval conflict?

The Hundred Years' War turned the unconquered rock into a symbol of French resistance, protected by its ramparts and the racing tides.

Mont-Saint-Michel is an outcrop of which hard rock that outlasted the softer stone eroding around it?

Granite here cooled from molten magma deep underground about 525 million years ago, long before rising seas left it standing alone.

What replaced the old raised causeway to Mont-Saint-Michel in 2014 so the sea could flow around the island again?

A bridge light enough to let water pass freely beneath it opened in 2014, and a rare supertide the next spring briefly cut the Mont off from the mainland.

Which sporting event opened its 2016 edition with a stage that started at Mont-Saint-Michel and finished at Utah Beach?

The Tour de France had already used the island in 2013, as the finish line of an individual time trial.

Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey, long used as a prison, was nicknamed 'of the Seas' after which notorious Paris fortress?

The Bastille of the Seas held prisoners until 1863, and that grim use is credited with saving the abbey from being torn down.

Mont-Saint-Michel's sister city is Hatsukaichi, home of an island shrine with a 'floating' gate, in which country?

Japan's Itsukushima Shrine shares more than a civic link: it too is a World Heritage Site ruled by the tide, which lets visitors walk out to its gate at low water.

Prisoners at Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey once powered which machine, built to hoist supplies up the side of the rock?

A treadwheel turned as inmates walked inside it, and the giant wheel, a copy of those on medieval building sites, still stands in the old ossuary.

Mont-Saint-Michel's bay, known for some of Europe's biggest tides, opens onto which body of water?

The English Channel's tide piles up here because the Cotentin Peninsula blocks its path and the bay is shallow and funnel-shaped.

Which monastic order did Duke Richard I of Normandy install on Mont-Saint-Michel in 966, replacing its earlier clergy?

Benedictines moved in after the duke told the resident canons to reform or leave; by the abbey's own account, all but one chose to go.

Before its sanctuary to the archangel was built, the islet of Mont-Saint-Michel was known as Mont what?

Mont Tombe took its new name after the oratory of 708, in full 'Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea'.

What name was given to the medieval pilgrims who walked from across Europe to Mont-Saint-Michel?

Miquelots came from as far as Germany and England, and modern hiking trails now retrace their routes to the bay.

Which part of La Merveille, Mont-Saint-Michel's Gothic wing, served the monks for prayer, meditation and processions?

The cloister has three arches that open onto empty air, the doorway to a chapter house that was never built.

The monks and nuns living on Mont-Saint-Michel since 2001 belong to monastic fraternities named after which holy city?

The Fraternities of Jerusalem, founded in Paris in 1975, rent their quarters from the French state and hold daily services in the abbey church.

Which Walking Dead spin-off, set in France, makes Mont-Saint-Michel the base of a resistance called the Union of Hope?

Daryl Dixon washes ashore in France with no idea how he got there, and the first season's finale brings him to the island.

Mont-Saint-Michel can be built as a World Wonder in which turn-based strategy game released in 2016?

Civilization VI is not the only game to borrow the island: Sniper Elite 5 rebuilt it as a fictional fortress, Beaumont-Saint-Denis.

Which invention of Claude Chappe was mounted on top of Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey church in the 1790s?

An optical telegraph passed messages with movable arms read by telescope, making the abbey a station on the line from Paris to Brest.

What did English troops abandon on the sands at Mont-Saint-Michel in 1434 that the town kept as trophies?

Two cannons, wrought-iron bombards nicknamed the Michelettes, were left behind when the besiegers gave up, and the French kept them as trophies.

What name is given to the wave that the rising sea drives up the rivers of Mont-Saint-Michel Bay?

A tidal bore, called a mascaret in French, forms here because the bay floor slopes so gently and the sea rises so far.

Which British electronic musician named a track on the album Drukqs after both Mont-Saint-Michel and St Michael's Mount?

Aphex Twin is not the only one: Mike Oldfield also named a piece after the island on his 1996 album Voyager.

The first oratory on Mont-Saint-Michel echoed an older sanctuary of the archangel on Mount Gargano in which country?

Italy's shrine, built over a cave in Puglia, dates from the late 5th century, and legend says Aubert sent two monks there to bring back relics.

Which French king founded the Order of Saint Michael in 1469, planning for its knights to meet at Mont-Saint-Michel?

Louis XI never got his wish, because the abbey proved too far from Paris; he also saw the rock's value as a prison.

In Christian art, the archangel honoured at Mont-Saint-Michel usually holds a sword and which other object?

A set of scales marks him as the weigher of souls on Judgement Day, which is why medieval pilgrims came seeking his protection.

Which seafaring raiders reached Mont-Saint-Michel in 847 and sacked the church that stood on the rock?

Vikings sacked the sanctuary, yet the island never stood deserted, because it still offered local people some protection.

Which American novelist left one of the famous autographs on the wall of Mont-Saint-Michel's La Mère Poulard?

Ernest Hemingway shares the wall with the designer Yves Saint Laurent, and the inn was a favourite of war correspondents in the 1940s.

Which French sculptor, known for an equestrian Joan of Arc in Paris, made the archangel atop Mont-Saint-Michel's spire?

Emmanuel Frémiet made his name as a sculptor of animals, and his archangel has crowned the new spire since 1897.

Which American historian paired Mont-Saint-Michel with Chartres in the title of a 1904 book on the medieval world?

Henry Adams first printed the book privately for his nieces, and in it he addresses his readers as tourists.

Which French king paid for La Merveille at Mont-Saint-Michel after a fire started by his ally damaged the abbey?

Philip Augustus was taking Normandy from King John of England when his ally's attack set the village alight and the flames spread uphill.

Which small archipelago off the Normandy coast supplied quarried stone for building Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey?

Chausey is said to count 365 islands at low tide and 52 at high tide, and a duke gave it to the abbey's monks in 1022.

Which Normandy town, whose bishop founded Mont-Saint-Michel, keeps the abbey's medieval manuscripts at Le Scriptorial?

Avranches took in the abbey's library during the French Revolution, and some two hundred of its medieval manuscripts are still kept there.

The choir of Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey church collapsed in 1421 and was rebuilt in which ornate late-Gothic style?

Flamboyant stonework took a century to finish, and it includes a 'lace staircase' that climbs across a buttress to the choir roof.