Photo : historicair 19:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sixt Fer à Cheval
Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval is a commune of Haute-Savoie, the second largest in the département with nearly 120 km², whose altitude ranges from 728 metres to over 3,000 metres at Mont Buet. The village developed around an abbey founded in 1144 by monks of Abondance abbey on land given by the local nobility; its first abbot was Ponce de Faucigny. The buildings visible today date from the seventeenth century, and the church of Sainte-Madeleine dates from the thirteenth.
The commune is home to the Fer-à-Cheval cirque, a large amphitheatre of limestone cliffs, as well as other cirques, high-altitude lakes and many waterfalls, such as the Rouget. It has five listed sites and four inscribed sites. The Sixt-Passy national nature reserve, which covers about 9,400 hectares, is the largest in Haute-Savoie, and its visitor centre is in the village.
Sixt is today a place for hiking and climbing in summer and a winter sports site in the cold season.
