Skellig Michael is an enormous mass of rock rising out of the Atlantic around 200 metres. It is not known when the first monks settled on Skellig Michael, the style of the stone houses suggest the 6th Century onwards. During the 9th Century the island has endured some Viking raids attacks, only a few monks did survive. The community at Skellig Michael has apparently never been huge, probably about 12 monks and an abbot. In the 12th Century the monks abandoned the island and moved to the Augustinian Monastery at Ballinskelligs on the Irish mainland. The Skellig Rocks became an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996 and it is still today one of the least accessible monasteries in the world. Apart from the sea conditions (only if the weather forecast is stable the ferries will leave Ireland to bring you to the Skellig Rocks) once you are there you will have to climb more than 600 stone steps carved out of the bare rock by the monks more than 1,000 years ago. Recently restrictions have been imposed on access, only small groups can visit Skellig Michael. George Bernard Shaw, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1925, said after visiting this gigantic site in 1910: 'Whoever has not stood in the graveyard on the summit of that cliff among the beehive dwellings and beehive oratory does not know Ireland through and through'.