Sights
A museum houses the collection of manuscripts of Mont Saint-Michel, deposited in the municipal archives during the French Revolution. It is one of the largest collections of medieval illuminated manuscripts in France, outside national and university libraries.
Formerly dominated by the cathedral, where Henry II did penance, an open grassed area La Plate-Forme overlooking the bay towards Mont Saint-Michel displays only a few remnants of the destroyed building.
The major church Notre Dame des Champs was constructed in Gothic Revival style in the 19th century to restore the religious life of the town after the destruction of the cathedral. A smaller church Saint Gervais houses a treasury, best known for the purported skull of Saint Aubert complete with hole where the archangel Michael's finger pierced it (probably a prehistoric trepanned skull).
The botanical gardens were founded in the grounds of the former Franciscan convent in the late 18th century. The expansion and introduction of exotic species in the 19th century and the location of the gardens overlooking the bay made the gardens an important sight in the town.
The Manoir de Brion, an ancient Benedictine priory of Mont Saint-Michel, is located in Dragey.
Avranches is twinned with St. Helier in Jersey. On 2 March 2010 a Jersey-registered boat "Archangel" succeeded in reaching Avranches at Marcey-les-Greves. It is believed this was the first instance of a foreign vessel reaching Avranches in modern times.
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Notre-Dame-des-Champs,
Stations of the Cross -
Saint-Gervais Basilica
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Saint-Gervais Basilica,
Skull of Saint Aubert
Read more about this topic: Avranches
Famous quotes containing the word sights:
“Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“We can’t always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)