AVRANCHES, capital of an arrondissement in the depart ment of Manche, north-west France, 87m. S. of Cherbourg on the Western railway. Pop. (1931) 6,251. It lies on the slopes and sum mits of a 341 f t. hill looking westward to the bay and rock of St. Michel. At the foot of the hill flows the tidal river See. The site was an important Roman military station, and in the middle ages Avranches was the chief place of a county of the duchy of Nor mandy.
It sustained several sieges, the most noteworthy of which, in 1591, was the result of its opposition to Henry IV. In 1639 it was the focus of the peasant revolt against the salt-tax, known as the revolt of the Nu-pieds. Avranches was from 511 to 1790 a bishop's see, held in the 17th century by Daniel Huet ; and its cathedral, destroyed as insecure at the time of the first French revolution, was the finest in Normandy. Its site is now occupied by an open square, one stone remaining to mark the spot where Henry II. of England received absolution for the murder of Thomas Beckett. Avranches is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a tribunal of first instance. Leather-dressing and lace-making and bleaching are also carried on, and horticulture flourishes in the environs. Trade is in cider, grain, butter, flowers and fruit, and there are salmon and other fisheries.