The mechanisms that drive early intestinal development are poorly understood, but it is widely believed that the foetal intestinal epithelium is multilayered (stratified). Here (see p. 4423), Deborah Gumucio and co-workers overturn this dogma. By analysing cell polarity, cell shape and cell dynamics in the foetal mouse intestine, they show that the early intestinal epithelium is single-layered (pseudostratified) and undergoes interkinetic nuclear migration (a process seen in other pseudostratified epithelia, in which nuclei move from the basal to the apical surface of the epithelium during the cell cycle). They report that microtubule- and actinomyosin-dependent apicobasal elongation drives the growth of intestinal epithelium girth that occurs at mid-gestation and that villus formation occurs by expansion of the apical surface. Finally, they show that, as in the pseudostratified neural tube, the actin-binding protein Shroom3 is crucial for the maintenance of the foetal intestinal epithelium. These results suggest a new model for intestinal morphogenesis in which the epithelium remains single-layered and apicobasally polarised throughout early intestinal development.