The monastery of St. Michael (Skellig Michael) is located in the Irish Sea, 12 kilometers off the coast of Ireland. Irish hermit monks are believed to have lived here since the 7th century AD. Over the next 700 years, they built a real monastery on a lonely rock in the middle of the sea.
Due to the fact that the island is relatively inaccessible for tourists and other idlers, the monastery has not yet been pulled apart on the rocks.
The monastery existed exactly until the relatively warm season ended in Europe - the so-called “small climatic optimum”.
Since the 13th century, even monks accustomed to Spartan conditions could not get along on a lonely, windswept rock in the middle of the sea. The island was abandoned, although for several centuries in a row then pilgrims visited the monastery a couple of times a year. In the 20s of the XIX century, the company that operated the port of Dublin built a couple of lighthouses on the island, but that was the end of its use for peaceful purposes.
Since 1996, the monastery and the island were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and then limited tourist flights began to be carried out there.
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