Mont-Saint-Michel France

Legendary

Accessible at low tide, this majestic town rises from the sea off the coast of Normandy.

Photo by RAMON ARIAS

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The tide here comes in faster than a person can run. Water rises as much as 15 meters, and within a couple of hours the rocky mount goes from sitting on a plain of sand to standing alone in the sea.

For centuries, that was the island's best defense. Armies had to time their attacks around the water, and quicksand waited for anyone who got it wrong.

According to legend, the story began in 708, when the Archangel Michael appeared to a bishop named Aubert in a dream and told him to build a church on the rock. Aubert ignored him twice.

The third time, the angel touched his head and left a hole in his skull. Aubert built the church.

Benedictine monks arrived in 966 and spent centuries building upward. The abbey now sits at the very top, with the village stacked below it on narrow streets that wind up the hill.

During the Hundred Years' War between England and France, English forces surrounded the mount and tried to starve it out. One siege lasted from 1423 to 1434.

They never took it. Mont-Saint-Michel was the only part of northern France the English failed to capture, and it became a symbol of French resistance.

After the French Revolution, the monks were forced out and the abbey became a prison. About 14,000 prisoners passed through before it closed in 1863, and the tides made escape nearly impossible.

German troops occupied the mount in June 1940, during World War II. They set up a lookout post in the church spire, and bored soldiers carved their names into the walls up there.

American soldiers freed the island in August 1944. Today only about 30 people live on it year-round, though close to three million visitors cross the bridge each year.

Climb the Grande Rue to the abbey, and look up in the cloister, which hangs on the edge of the rock with nothing but sky beyond it. Check the tide tables and watch the sea rush in from the ramparts. Book a guided walk across the bay at low tide to feel the sand shift under your feet, the way pilgrims did for a thousand years.