France: Mont Saint Michel
Feb 19, 2009 13:22:06 GMT
Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2009 13:22:06 GMT
Lots of people have seen spectacular photos of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, but most people don't know much about it.
It's a small hilly island just off the coast, which became important both for its strategic value as well as the inevitable miraculous apparitions that existed before the days of television to entertain people. "You will build a church here."
Easier said than done, but over the centuries, it was built and rebuilt and more was built on top, so the bottom layers are 1000 years old and the "new" stuff on top -- spire and archangel -- only date from the 17th century, around 1650.
The place housed monasteries and nunneries over the years, and since it was a good, solid isolated place, it became a prison after the Revolution. The prison wasn't closed until 1863, and finally it was decided that the place should be a national monument in 1874.
The island has long been attacked by raging dangerous tides, so mankind attacked right back by building a causeway for permanent access. And then they bay began to fill with silt.
From 1901 to 1938, there was even a train line on the causeway.
In the first part of the 20th century, though, people didn't pay all that much attention to Mont Saint Michel. It only began to attract tourists around 1969, if you can believe that. The population on the Mont itself has shrunk from a high of 1182 in 1851 to only 41 people today.
However, it is now the #1 tourist attraction in France outside the Paris metropolitan area and has 3,250,000 visitors a year.
Work is finally underway to de-silt the bay by destroying the causeway and replacing it with a bridge and quite possibly a new train line. Considering the fact that the tides can reach 14 meters in height at certain periods of the year, Mother Nature can get rid of most of the sand quite fast if things are done properly.
Right now Mont Saint Michel still looks like this:
In 2012, it should look more like this:
It's a small hilly island just off the coast, which became important both for its strategic value as well as the inevitable miraculous apparitions that existed before the days of television to entertain people. "You will build a church here."
Easier said than done, but over the centuries, it was built and rebuilt and more was built on top, so the bottom layers are 1000 years old and the "new" stuff on top -- spire and archangel -- only date from the 17th century, around 1650.
The place housed monasteries and nunneries over the years, and since it was a good, solid isolated place, it became a prison after the Revolution. The prison wasn't closed until 1863, and finally it was decided that the place should be a national monument in 1874.
The island has long been attacked by raging dangerous tides, so mankind attacked right back by building a causeway for permanent access. And then they bay began to fill with silt.
From 1901 to 1938, there was even a train line on the causeway.
In the first part of the 20th century, though, people didn't pay all that much attention to Mont Saint Michel. It only began to attract tourists around 1969, if you can believe that. The population on the Mont itself has shrunk from a high of 1182 in 1851 to only 41 people today.
However, it is now the #1 tourist attraction in France outside the Paris metropolitan area and has 3,250,000 visitors a year.
Work is finally underway to de-silt the bay by destroying the causeway and replacing it with a bridge and quite possibly a new train line. Considering the fact that the tides can reach 14 meters in height at certain periods of the year, Mother Nature can get rid of most of the sand quite fast if things are done properly.
Right now Mont Saint Michel still looks like this:
In 2012, it should look more like this: