Perched on a rock off France's northern coast and resembling a castle out of a fairy tale, the Benedictine abbey of Mont Saint-Michel is receiving modern-day engineering reinforcements against encroaching salt marshes. The $270-million project, including a new river dam and an unobtrusive steelwork bridge to replace a nineteenth-century causeway, aims to mitigate environmental harm rendered by decades of siltation.
Located on a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Gothic-style abbey was built between the 11th and 16th centuries about 40 kilometers east of Saint-Malo. Aside from Paris, Mont Saint-Michel is France's biggest tourist attraction, pulling in about 2.5 million visitors a year, according to Syndicat Mixte Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel (SMBMS), the consortium of local authorities handling the project.