Sand Castle

It is an island, and yet it it not. It is an important religious seat, and yet only sometimes. It is a unique place, and yet not exactly. It is a place of sanctuary, and yet not always. It is a piece of ancient architecture, and yet not entirely. Mont Saint Michel, on the Northern coast of France in a sandy bay where Brittany meets Normandy, is a spectacular paradox in space and time. 

Mont Saint Michael, Serenity Grid

Erwan Elan has reconstructed Mont Saint Michel on his Opensim grid, Serenity, and it's a realistic piece of magic. The island takes up an entire sim, and is walkable in a way that creates a perfect sense of place. There are gaunt defenses and soaring vaults, dizzying heights and a warren of narrow streets. It is a tour de force, and most of the images here come from Erwan's build. Why not make the trip to see it for yourself, the HG Address is, as always, at the end of the post.

RL Photo of  Mont Saint Michel in the late 1800's

As in virtual, the RL location of the island is liminal, sitting as it does in the bay between Brittany and Normandy on the North coast of France, in constant conflict with the tides and tempests of the English Channel. Mount Saint Michel is extraordinary in every way - an island connected by causeway to the mainland only for a few hours each day, surrounded by treacherous sand, battered by ferocious tides, busy with tourists year round, a small town dominated by an imposing cathedral and monastic buildings - a piece of medieval France constantly at war with the elements, with politics, and the march of time - and winning.

Erwan Elan's island version is more lost at sea than the original

Mont Tomb - from the Latin word for mound - is the oldest recorded name for this outstanding piece of geology.  Shallow but treacherous sands and a tide that comes galloping in do indeed add to its air of fatal attraction. Around 700 AD St Michael comes into it, because Benedictine monks were working on a string of seven monasteries in a straight line across Europe, all dedicated to the archangel, reaching from Ireland to modern-day Israel, including a sort of mountain mirror image of Mont Saint Michel, the soaring walls of the Sacra di S Michele near Turin, made famous by novel and film, The Name of the Rose. 

Long-legged legends abound. 

It's said that one day, the Devil brought a lot of giant boulders to this site, planning a city on the sea. At the same time, St Michael had built a city of ice. The Devil saw the ice city, and liked it. Michael proposed a swap, but as soon as it was agreed on and Satan had scratched (French rayer) his name on the contract, a sunbeam (French rayon de soleil)  shone down on the ice castle and melted it. There's a lesson in there for us all.

In terms of architecture, around the year 1000, Romanesque was all the rage, and Mont Saint Michel had a fine abbey church in that style. Soon, Mont Saint Michel acquired the nickname Cité des Livres, for the multitude of manuscripts made here, but it was also a strategic weapon in the endless war between England and France. 

Between attacks, sieges, fires, rebuilds, blockades, improved battlements and barbicans, and  seemingly endless visions of a gung-ho St Michael ready for battle, the period known as the 100 Years War left plenty of marks on the island. The Romanesque abbey church, for example, was so damaged by the various assaults on its walls that it had to be demolished, and replaced with a gothic church in the late 1400's. The religious complex is many-layered.

As times changed and financial possibilities came along, the monks built vertically, so that many of the original halls and open spaces that the earlier generations used were roofed over, and transformed into lower level rooms used as dormitories for pilgrims, store rooms, and dungeons. Additional pillars and buttresses reinforced these rooms so that they could bear the weight of the masonry of the upper levels.

The long back-and-forth between the French and English ended with a defeat to the English in 1434, and two English brass cannons, known as 'Michelettes' are still on view at the entrance to the village.

The village at the foot of the monastery was a small community subsisting on fishing and on serving the Abbey, with narrow streets and walled gardens, built on the landward side of the island, for the most part. Why on the landward part? Just Google 'high tide  at Saint Malo' and take a look at what the water does to seaside buildings. The natural rocky terrain deters building and farming, and remains a wilderness oasis for shoreline fauna and flora, as well as providing a natural breakwater.

On the landward side, restaurants and hotels now soak up the south facing shoreline. Erwan has represented them with gay red pare-soleils on the terrace, and picture windows in the old grey facades.

Today, the narrow streets are filled with boutiques and souvenir shops, and above them, restaurants and hotels look out over the sandy bay, making the most of the southern sunshine.

It's not always sunny in this part of the world, though... it can be pretty grim.

Its lonely, fortified position made it ideal as a place of power and spirituality, it was also great for a jail, and in the 1620's, King Louis XII, son of Marie de' Medici, and father of the Sun King, imposed upon the few Benedictine monks left there, a detention center for political prisoners. Imagine being put in a cage hung from the ceiling, in a room with walls so thick that no sound reaches you, except the roaring sound of the tidal bore.

The poulain or 'foal', a treadmill operated by five or six men, was used lift supplies up into the upper building. The cruel precursor to goods elevator, it was a sort of wooden sledge that sat over an almost vertical spine of masonry  running up the outside of the building, shown in the center of this picture of Erwan's build. Massive chains connected it to the treadmill, the thing must have weighed a ton even before you put any supplies on it. That's some heavy lifting.  

In 1793, during the French Revolution, the monks were turfed out completely and the churches closed down. The government took over, and the renamed 'Mont Libre' became a prison this time for priests who would not renounce their calling. 

Speaking of priests, on Erwan's build, the cloister respects the real world layout of quiet arches and modest hedge, a place of monastic reflection enlivened by the shining statue of the archangel. An ecclesiastical suntrap, when the wind and water are making life less balmy on the beach.

Even after the end of the Revolution, the prison on the island remained in operation right up to the 1860's, when it was shut down for good and the much dilapidated island complex finally began to be restored, by public subscription and government money.  

Big names in France like Victor Hugo signed petitions to get the funding for a causeway to finally link the island with the mainland - a tram service was added in the 1870s. 

Twenty years later, a spire finally topped to the highest point, creating the iconic silhouette. In a world of rising prices and  uncertain travel plans, you may consider a visit to Mount Saint Michel beyond your reach. But you would be wrong there. No packing required, you can experience the soaring architecture without leaving home.

HG Address   serenitygrid.com:8010:SERENITY-Mont-Saint-Michel