Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte

Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte stands in the Cotentin, where its castle and Benedictine abbey gave the settlement importance in medieval Normandy. The parish church, once within the castle enclosure, was moved outside it as the town grew. Its fortifications later made Saint-Sauveur a prized stronghold in the Hundred Years' War.

Before the French siege of 1375, the English destroyed the nearby abbey to prevent their enemies from using it. Its displaced monks fled, some finding refuge in Jersey and others in distant monasteries. French artillery fired on the castle from the heights above the town, and after a long siege the garrison surrendered. The abbey remained in ruins for years; rebuilding followed the final expulsion of the English from Normandy in the fifteenth century.