Page 256 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - France

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire centre after a tree trunk said
⌂ Pl Jean de Saint-Avit to contain drops of Christ’s
§ 02 33 58 25 15 # Jun–Sep: blood was washed ashore
Wed–Sun here in the 7th century. This is
enshrined in a reliquary at the
entrance to the Lady Chapel
20 of the abbey church, La Trinité.
The Palais Bénédictine
Côte d’Albâtre is a vast Neo-Gothic and
EXPERIENCE Normandy Aubert’s skull in the £ @ g n 28 rue Raymond local wine and spirits merchant
Renaissance homage to the
! D2 ⌂ Seine-Maritime
ego of Alexandre le Grand, a
Aron, Mont-Saint-Again;
who rediscovered the monks’
www.seine-maritime-
recipe for Bénédictine, the
tourisme.com
famous herbal liqueur. Built in
1882, it incorporates a distillery
treasury of St-Gervais
The Alabaster Coast gets its
church, Avranches
name from the chalky cliffs
and milky waters that charac-
curios. The adjacent halls
terize the Normandy coastline and a museum packed with
provide an aromatic account
19 between Le Havre and Le and tastings of the herbs and
Tréport. It is best known for the spices that make up the elixir.
Avranches Falaise d’Aval, west of Étretat,
eroded into an arch. The author
! C2 ⌂ Manche £ @ INSIDER TIP
n 2 rue Général-de- Guy de Mau passant, born near Elephant Trunk
Dieppe in 1850, compared
Gaulle; www.ot.
montsaintmichel.com these cliffs to an elephant Étretat is famed for its
dipping its trunk into the sea. 71-m- (233-ft-) high
Avranches has been a re ligious From Étretat, a chain of coastal “elephant trunk” arch
centre since the 6th century; roads runs east across a switch- which leans out from the
the final staging post for back of breezy headlands and Falaise d’Aval cliff into
visi tors to the abbey on wooded valleys to Dieppe. the sea. For the best
Mont-St-Michel. According to Fécamp is the only major view, look left from the
legend, the Archangel Michael town along this route. Its beach or climb up the
came to Aubert, the bishop of Benedictine abbey was once Falaise d’Amont.
Avranches, one night in 708 an important pilgrimage
and told him to build a church
on the nearby island. Aubert’s
skull, supposedly with the
fingerhole poked by by the
angel, can be seen in the
treasury of St-Gervais in
Avranches. The best views of
Mont-St-Michel are from the
Jardin des Plantes. More than
200 illuminated manuscripts
were rescued from Mont-St-
Michel’s abbey after the
Revolution. These and many
others are held in the Musée
des Manu scrits du Mont-St-
Michel. Multimedia displays
show how monks copied and
illuminated the texts. The
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire
highlights life in the Cotentin
during World War II.
Musée des Manuscrits
du Mont-St-Michel
" ⌂ Pl d’Estouteville
# 10am–6pm Tue–Sun (to Sunrise over the
7pm Jul & Aug) ¢Public towering chalky cliffs of
hols ∑ scriptorial.fr Étretat, Côte d’Albâtre
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