Iona

View of St Mary’s Abbey and of the coast of Iona, an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It is known in history as the place where the conversion of Scotland to Christianity began, initiated by Columba, who was a native of Ireland and came to found a monastery in the island.

When the Protestant reformation later spread to Scotland, the religious buildings of Iona where closed and partly destroyed. At the end of the nineteenth century, Iona Abbey was still a ruin, sometimes referred to as Iona Cathedral. It was rebuilt in 1938.

The caption reads in the original French: Iona. — Ruines de l’église sainte-Marie.