The Most Beautiful Places in Brittany
12 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Brittany are Ploumanac'h Lighthouse, Fort la Latte and Carnac stones. The list covers 12 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Brittany is the granite peninsula at the western tip of France, a land of rocky headlands, Atlantic weather and a Celtic language still spoken in the west. Its people have built in stone for six thousand years, and two great traditions stand out: the Neolithic megaliths of the south coast, among the oldest monuments in Europe, and the parish closes of Finistère, where rural communities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries poured their wealth from linen and trade into carved granite.
The Carnac stones are the most famous megalithic site in France: long rows of more than three thousand standing stones stretching across the heath near the Gulf of Morbihan, raised in the Neolithic for purposes still debated. In Finistère, the calvaries are the heart of the parish closes, walled churchyards entered through a ceremonial gate. At Guimiliau, a crowded calvary carries some two hundred figures telling the life and Passion of Christ. The calvary at Plougastel-Daoulas was raised in the early seventeenth century in thanks for the end of a plague, and at Saint-Thégonnec the calvary stands beside a church whose interior is filled with carved and gilded woodwork.
The Rothéneuf rocks near Saint-Malo are the work of one man: at the end of the nineteenth century a hermit priest, the Abbé Fouré, spent years carving hundreds of figures into the granite of the seashore, a legend of a local corsair family told in stone and slowly worn by the waves.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ploumanac'h Lighthouse | Lighthouse | |
| 2 | Fort la Latte | Castle | |
| 3 | Carnac stones | Megalith | ✓ |
| 4 | Aiguilles de Port-Coton, Belle-Île | Stack | |
| 5 | Calvary at Guimiliau | Wayside shrine | |
| 6 | La Jument Lighthouse | Lighthouse | |
| 7 | Pointe du Raz | Cliff | |
| 8 | Cairn of Gavrinis | Tumulus | |
| 9 | Saint-Mathieu Lighthouse | Lighthouse | |
| 10 | Calvary at Plougastel-Daoulas | Wayside shrine | |
| 11 | Rochers sculptés de Rothéneuf | Sculpture | |
| 12 | Calvary at Saint-Thégonnec | Wayside shrine |
01 Ploumanac'h Lighthouse
Phare de Ploumanac'h
France48.837° N 3.483° W
Image by ykaiavu from Pixabay The Ploumanac'h lighthouse, officially the Mean Ruz light, stands at the heart of one of the most extraordinary coastlines in France, the Côte de Granit Rose in northern Brittany.
Did you know? Besides Henry Auffret, the architect Joël Hardion co-designed the tower, which was built by a local firm, Martin et frère.
02 Fort la Latte
France48.668° N 2.284° W
Johan Allard · CC BY-SA 4.0 Fort la Latte stands on a rocky headland of the Breton coast, directly above the sea. Its stone keep, gatehouses and curtain walls seem to grow out of the cliff, and from the ramparts the view sweeps across the Bay of Saint-Malo toward Cap Fréhel, a few kilometres to the northwest.
Did you know? Because the fort sits on solid rock where no well could be dug, the garrison of about forty men relied on a rainwater cistern holding some 20,000 litres.
03 Carnac stones
Alignements de Carnac
France · 27.7 km from Lorient47.593° N 3.080° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by aleslanger from Pixabay Some three thousand granite stones stand in rows across the heath and pine woods north of Carnac, on the south coast of Brittany, and they were raised by Neolithic farming communities, most probably around 3300 BC, with parts of the ensemble perhaps going back as far as 4500 BC.
Did you know? Some of the jade axeheads are up to 46 cm long and may have taken more than a thousand hours to polish.
04 Aiguilles de Port-Coton, Belle-Île
Aiguilles de Port-Coton
France47.306° N 3.240° W
Rivière, Henri (1864-1951). Dessinateur · Public domain On the wild Atlantic coast of Belle-Île, the largest island off Brittany, a cluster of rock needles stands in the sea at the mouth of a narrow inlet called Port-Coton.
Did you know? The Port-Coton canvases were first shown in 1887 at Georges Petit's Paris gallery, and again in 1889 in the joint Monet–Rodin exhibition there.
05 Calvary at Guimiliau
Calvaire de Guimiliau
France · 38.4 km from Brest48.488° N 3.997° W
Hyppolyte de Saint-Rambert · CC BY-SA 4.0 Guimiliau is a small village in the Finistère countryside, yet its parish close around the church of Saint-Miliau is one of the finest in Brittany, and its calvary is often called the most populous of them all.
Did you know? According to legend, Katell Gollet was a young woman who took the devil as her lover and stole a consecrated host for him, which sent her to hell.
06 La Jument Lighthouse
Phare de la Jument
France48.422° N 5.134° W
Falken · CC BY-SA 3.0 La Jument is the lighthouse of the famous storm photograph: a slim stone tower on a reef off Ushant, the island at the westernmost edge of Brittany, with a wall of white water rising around it and a keeper standing in the open doorway.
Did you know? In September 1974 a wave smashed into the lantern itself, forcing the two keepers on duty to take refuge lower in the tower.
07 Pointe du Raz
France48.040° N 4.741° W
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY-SA 4.0 At the far western end of Cap Sizun, the granite of Brittany narrows into a jagged blade of rock that runs out into the Atlantic. The Pointe du Raz rises about 72 metres above the sea and drops away in broken cliffs and scree towards the water, where waves break constantly over the reefs.
Did you know? A marble statue of Notre-Dame-des-Naufragés, Our Lady of the Shipwrecked, by the sculptor Cyprian Godebski stands on the headland.
08 Cairn of Gavrinis
Cairn de Gavrinis
France47.572° N 2.899° W
Myrabella · CC BY-SA 3.0 Gavrinis is a small granite island in the Gulf of Morbihan, uninhabited and only about 750 by 400 metres, and the round stone mound on its crest hides one of the most richly carved chambers of the Neolithic in Europe.
Did you know? The engravings were pecked into the granite using hard quartz pebbles as tools.
09 Saint-Mathieu Lighthouse
Phare de Saint-Mathieu
France · 21.5 km from Brest48.330° N 4.771° W
JackyM59 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Few lighthouses stand in company as strange as Saint-Mathieu's. The white tower with its red crown rises straight out of the ruined nave of a Benedictine abbey on the Pointe Saint-Mathieu, the cliff-edged headland at the western tip of Brittany where the Iroise sea meets the approaches to Brest.
Did you know? In 1771 the comte d'Estaing had the lantern fitted with large panes of Bohemian glass, double-wick lamps burning fish and rapeseed oil, and polished metal reflectors.
10 Calvary at Plougastel-Daoulas
Calvaire de Plougastel-Daoulas
France · 9.4 km from Brest48.374° N 4.370° W
Duch.seb · CC BY-SA 3.0 In the middle of Plougastel-Daoulas, a market town on the peninsula across the Elorn estuary from Brest, stands one of the great calvaries of Brittany: a ten-metre stone stage crowded with 182 figures.
Did you know? Among the figures are Breton peasants in bragou-braz, the baggy breeches of the region, and a bagpipe player.
11 Rochers sculptés de Rothéneuf
France48.687° N 1.968° W
user:Fanoflesage · CC BY-SA 3.0 On a granite headland above the sea at Rothéneuf, faces, bodies and beasts seem to push their way out of the rock itself.
Did you know? Among the figures is Mère Michel with her cat, the heroine of a French nursery song, alongside Gargantua and the wealthy king Croesus.
12 Calvary at Saint-Thégonnec
Calvaire de Saint-Thégonnec
France48.520° N 3.947° W
Gerhard Haubold · CC BY-SA 3.0 Saint-Thégonnec, a village in northern Finistère south-west of Morlaix, owns one of the richest parish closes in Brittany: a walled churchyard entered through a Renaissance triumphal gateway, with an ossuary chapel, the church of Notre-Dame and, at its heart, a calvary dated 1610.
Did you know? In the pietà on the back of the cross, the Virgin holds her dead son's hand, with the wound of the nail clearly carved in it.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Brittany?
- On our list, Ploumanac'h Lighthouse ranks first, followed by Fort la Latte and Carnac stones.
- How old are the Carnac stones?
- Most of the alignments date from the Neolithic, roughly between 4500 and 3300 BC. They are older than Stonehenge's great sarsen circle and the pyramids of Giza.
- What is a parish close in Brittany?
- An enclos paroissial is a walled churchyard grouping a church, a triumphal gateway, an ossuary and a calvary. The finest were built in Finistère in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when villages competed to outdo one another.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Brittany?
- In our collection, the places in Brittany are most often wayside shrines (3), lighthouses (3), rock formations (1) and cliffs (1).
- How many places are on this list in Brittany?
- The list covers 12 places.