St Michael the Archangel takes flight

The 19th-century statue of the Archangel St Michael was helicoptered from its perch, 156m above the abbey Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, on 15 March so it could be restored. The €450,000 project is part of a larger €7m programme financed by France’s Centre des Monuments Nationaux to preserve the island abbey-fortress, which has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1979. Since 2013, repairs have also been made to the roof and the stained-glass windows of the Medieval abbey.The