Photo: Benh LIEU SONG (Flickr) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, following its one-way visitor route. It climbs from the Guardroom up the Grand Degré, where the founding legend of Aubert and the Benedictines installed in 966 are told, to the Saut-Gaultier platform and the West Terrace, where three bays of the nave stood until an eighteenth-century fire. In the abbey church, begun in 1023, the timber-roofed Romanesque nave leads to the Flamboyant Gothic choir rebuilt after the collapse of 1421. At the top of the Merveille come the cloister with its 137 columns and the refectory, then the walk goes down through the Guests' Hall, the Crypt of the Great Pillars and the Crypt of Saint-Martin, to the great wooden treadwheel that prisoners turned when the abbey was a state prison until 1863. It ends through the Chapel of Saint-Étienne and its Dance of the Dead, the Monks' Walkway, the Knights' Hall, the Cellar and the Almonry, the three storeys ranked from the poor at the bottom to the monks at the top.
17 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 44 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 4 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Guardroom, Grand Degré, Saut-Gaultier Platform, West Terrace, Abbey Church: Romanesque Nave, Abbey Church: Flamboyant Gothic Choir.
Cloister, Refectory, Guests' Hall, Crypt of the Great Pillars, Crypt of Saint-Martin.
Great Treadwheel, Chapel of Saint-Étienne, Monks' Walkway, Knights' Hall, Cellar, Almonry.
The terrace where three bays of the nave stood until an eighteenth-century fire, with views from Cancale to the Normandy cliffs.
The nave of the church begun in 1023 on the narrow summit, built upward on crypts and always roofed in timber, never stone.
The early thirteenth-century cloister at the top of the Merveille, its 137 columns set in staggered rows around an open garden.
The mid-fifteenth-century crypt built to carry the new choir after the collapse of 1421, its two central pillars called the palm trees.
The wooden wheel that prisoners walked inside to haul supplies up the rock, set in the room where monks once kept their dead.
Not a room for knights but a bright, heated monastic workroom with two great fireplaces, built after the fire of 1204.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 17 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 17 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey — the Merveille and the Abbey Church, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
17 narration points, including Grand Degré, Abbey Church: Romanesque Nave, Abbey Church: Flamboyant Gothic Choir, Refectory and Guests' Hall. That is about 18 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 17 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.