Haute-Loire: what to see and do

Mont Mézenc

A former volcano peaking at 1,753 metres on the border of Haute-Loire and Ardèche, Mont Mézenc offers one of the widest panoramas of the Massif Central. In clear weather, the gaze reaches the Alps and the Cévennes.

Statue Notre-Dame de France

A monumental statue of the Virgin and Child cast from the iron of cannons captured at Sevastopol, dominating Le Puy-en-Velay from the top of the Corneille Rock.

Cascade de la Baume

A magnificent 30 m waterfall (the largest in Haute-Loire) tumbling from a basalt cliff.

Château de Lespinasse

The fortified castle of Lespinasse existed at the start of the twelfth century. Still inhabited, it has escaped destruction and poor restorations.

Château de Rochebaron

From the end of a ridge, the Château de Rochebaron overlooks the Loire gorges. Probably built by the lords of Rochebaron in the eleventh century, the castle was reworked in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, before being abandoned under Louis XIV.

Château de Saint vidal

An imposing fortress in the Borne valley, fief of the La Tour de Saint-Vidal family.

Le Dyke d'Arlempdes

A strange rock topped by a feudal castle 80 metres above the Loire. An old lava flow "moulded" in a fissure, then cleared by erosion.

Le château de Chalencon

Occupied today largely by the presbytery, the castle has undergone many alterations but retains real interest.

Abbatiale Saint-Robert de La Chaise-Dieu

Arlempdes

This little village occupies an astonishing site on a rocky spur overlooking the wild gorges of the Loire, where it curves and carves its bed towards Le Puy-en-Velay.

Basilique Saint-Julien

Blesle

The existence and development of the village depended until the Revolution on a Benedictine nuns' abbey, founded around the middle of the ninth century.

Chapelle Saint Michel

Château Lafayette

Château de Domeyrat

Château de Polignac

The fortress, since the tenth century, was the cradle of the greatest family of the Velay, the Polignac family, one of the most illustrious in French history.

Château des Evêques-du-Puy

Cloître de l'abbaye de Lavaudieu

La Cathédrale Notre-Dame

La cascade de Louade

La cascade du Salin ou de Chaudeyrolles

The Salin stream once offered, at Chaudeyrolles in Haute-Loire, a waterfall of about ten metres to admire in the Mézenc massif, not far from its emblematic summit.

Lac du Bouchet

Lac du Bouchet, circular in shape, occupies the hollow of a crater. A fir wood surrounds it. The water level remains mysteriously constant; scientists have studied this phenomenon without really explaining it.

Lavaudieu

Lavaudieu (the valley of God) has much to offer the lover of Romanesque architecture. This village was indeed the site of a Benedictine abbey founded in the eleventh century.

Lavoûte-Chilhac

A village of the Allier gorges, grouped around its old priory in a bend of the river, among the Most Beautiful Villages of France.

Le Cloître de la cathédrale

Le Lac bleu de Champclause

This natural curiosity is in the Lauzière park of the Blue Lake in the commune of Champclause in the Haute-Loire département.

Le Musée fantastique de La Bête du Gévaudan

Le Puy en Velay

Located in the south-east of the Massif Central, starting point of the "Via Podiensis" to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Le Puy-en-Velay is above all an exceptional site.

Le Ravin de Corboeuf

A fragile canyon of multicoloured clays, the Corbœuf ravine is an exceptional natural monument of the Haute-Loire.

Musée Crozatier

Musée de l'école du Monastier

Musée des croyances populaires

Pradelles

A pilgrims' road to Saint-Gilles-du-Gard and a transhumance drove road between Languedoc and the summits of the Massif Central, the Regordane way made Pradelles a crossroads where salt, oil and wine were traded, and even munitions during the Wars of Religion.

Train Touristique des Gorges de l'Allier

You are about to enter the Allier Gorges, where no road passes.

Cascade de la Beaume

An impressive basalt fall where the water rushes down fan-shaped volcanic organ pipes.