Mont Saint-Michel rises from a tidal bay on the Normandy coast, a granite island crowned by an abbey that has drawn pilgrims from across Europe for more than thirteen centuries.

The abbey was founded in 709 AD, when Bishop Aubert of Avranches claimed the Archangel Michael appeared to him and ordered a church built on the rock. By the time of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the island already had a village, and its library would later become the largest in the Christian world, earning it the name the City of Books.

After the French Revolution, the abbey was abandoned and turned into a prison. The golden statue of the Archangel Michael on top of the spire was only added in 1897. The stones used to build it were ferried from islands thirty kilometres out to sea, carried in on the tide.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour, narrated as if by the abbey's founding bishop, traces the site's history from the first vision to the present day, connecting its architecture, its pilgrimage routes and its long relationship with the sea.