Every year, 2. Yet despite its seemingly homogenous architecture, the abbey, which was founded in the 8th century by Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, and became a powerful Benedictine monastery in the 10th century, is a structural kaleidoscope.
It took more than a thousand years, and layer upon layer of constructions, demolitions and reconstructions to make it what it is today—a historical conundrum! However, it was only two decades ago that scientists, mainly historians and archaeologists, began to explore the monument dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. The hundred or so bricks analyzed in the s using three different techniques— carbon Fermer Used only for organic materials, carbon makes it possible to date the charcoal encased in the ancient mortar.
The bricks of the chapel Notre Dame Sous Terre, the oldest part of the monastery, have been dated to the 10th century. In the autumn of , a joint project with the laboratory METIS 3 relied on ground-penetrating radar GPR, or georadar , a technology normally used by geologists to probe the subsurface, to determine that there was no previous construction below the level of Notre Dame Sous Terre.
On the Mont Saint Michel, even the names of the edifices can be confusing. Perhaps the most impressive of the many architectural wonders of the Mont Saint Michel is the magnificent abbey church that stands at its peak, dating back to the 11th century after the founding of the Benedictine monastery—even though the rock bed at the hilltop does not exceed 10 meters in length.
Georadar unveiled the secret of the Gothic crypt under the choir of the abbey church: its pillars are Romanesque and were sheathed for reinforcement in the 15th century. One of them, the Crypt of the Massive Pillars, has long been a source of fascination for researchers. The organization of the monastery itself continues to raise questions: where were the pilgrims accommodated?
