Monastic life
Mass and monastic life at Mont-Saint-Michel today
Who lives and prays in the abbey now, and what a visitor can expect to see.
See dates and tours on Viator ↗A community still in residence
Since June 2001, a community from the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem has lived in the abbey, currently numbering around seven sisters and four brothers, and keeps a cycle of liturgical offices through the day. They are resident in the abbey rather than its administrators — the building itself is managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux.
The abbey is older than the current community
Benedictine monks first took on the site in 966, nearly two and a half centuries after Bishop Aubert of Avranches founded a sanctuary here in 708. The monastic presence on the rock has not been continuous across that whole span — the current fraternity is a comparatively recent chapter in a much longer history.
What a visitor can see of it
The abbey church and La Merveille are open to visitors on the same route as the rest of the monument; the offices and any services are a separate, quieter layer of the building's life that a day visit will mostly observe rather than join.
The prison interruption
Monastic use was broken for a long stretch after the French Revolution, when the abbey was converted into a prison; that use ended in 1863, after which restoration and eventually a return of religious life followed over the following decades.
Visiting respectfully
Because the abbey is a working religious site as well as a monument, visitors are asked to keep noise down near the church and any area where the current community is active — the same courtesy expected at any working place of worship.