Avranches

Avranches is a town in the Manche department of Normandy, north-western France, overlooking the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel. It takes its name from the Gaulish Abrincatui, whose chief town it was under Rome, and it was the seat of a bishopric from late antiquity until the French Revolution. In 1944 the American breakthrough at Avranches opened the way into Brittany and the rest of France.