Photo : Nanzig / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Le Dyke d'Arlempdes
The Arlempdes dyke is a volcanic rock that overlooks by nearly a hundred metres the steep-sided valley of the Loire, about thirty kilometres south-east of Le Puy-en-Velay, very near the source of the river. It is an old lava flow that moulded itself into a fissure, which erosion then cleared by carrying away the surrounding rock. The region offers other basalt flows, some with organ pipes.
On this pinnacle stands the Château d'Arlempdes, already mentioned in a papal bull of 1266 and developed from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. Its position on the dyke made it a fortress watching over the valley. At the foot of the rock, the village of Arlempdes is listed among Les Plus Beaux Villages de France; it has about 150 inhabitants. You can see a Romanesque church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a fifteenth-century stone cross. The place name, of Celtic origin, is said to mean "temple of the east".
