Mont Saint-Michel, Hilltop chapel and archaeological site in Saint-Jean-Saverne, Bas-Rhin, France

Mont Saint-Michel is a 437-metre hill in the Northern Vosges above Saint-Jean-Saverne, in the Bas-Rhin. Its summit is a platform of greywacke puddingstone and quartz pebbles, with a chapel at the western end and a large circular basin cut into the rock at the eastern end. A natural cave opens beneath the platform, and a spring rises about fifty metres west of the chapel.

The hilltop was occupied in the second Iron Age, linked to the nearby Heidenstadt oppidum, and the cave was inhabited again by the mid-9th century. In 1126 Peter of Lutzelbourg, resolving a property dispute with Folmar of Hunebourg, gave the site to the abbey of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Saint-Jean-Saverne. A chapel existed before 1371, when a chaplain is recorded; it was abandoned in the 16th century and rebuilt in 1593, when Abbot Johann Schreyer founded the pilgrimage and the Saint Michael brotherhood.

The name Mont Saint-Michel only replaced Hertenstein and Bruderberg after 1593, when abbot Johann Schreyer founded the Saint-Michel brotherhood and turned the older hermit chapel into a pilgrimage site. Local tales tie the hill to witches: the witch Itta, wife of Count Peter of Lutzelbourg, was said to be buried alive in the hollow called Hexenloch.

The archaeological trail starts at the Croix de Langenthal car park at 401 m; its main route runs 8.5 km and links the prehistoric, Roman and medieval sites of the ridge. The summit plateau is reached easily only from the west, the other three sides being steep. A stone cross there recalls a Swedish officer killed in the Thirty Years' War.

The summit plateau of grauwacke puddingstone and quartz pebbles holds a large circular basin cut into the rock at its eastern end. Its purpose is unresolved: interpretations range from a pool linked to Mithra worship to the cellar of a vanished building. Local legends call it a druids' sacrifice site or a witches' school.