The Most Beautiful Places in Nouvelle-Aquitaine
16 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Nouvelle-Aquitaine are Dune of Pilat, La Roque-Gageac and Cordouan Lighthouse. The list covers 16 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine runs from the vineyards of Bordeaux and the long Atlantic shore of the Landes to the limestone valleys of the Périgord and the high Pyrenees of Béarn. The soft rock of the Dordogne and Vézère valleys is riddled with shelters and caves, which is why this corner of France holds some of the richest traces of Ice Age people anywhere, while the medieval pilgrim roads to Santiago left Romanesque churches across Poitou.
The Dune of Pilat, Europe's tallest sand dune, rises over the pine forest and the Arcachon basin, and the Pic du Midi d'Ossau lifts its split volcanic summit above the Béarn valleys. In the Périgord, Lascaux keeps painted bulls, horses and stags from the Upper Palaeolithic, La Roque-Gageac presses its houses against a cliff above the Dordogne, and the clipped box hedges of Marqueyssac curl along a ridge high over the same river.
Human craft shows in very different forms: the Romanesque murals of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, the church that monks hollowed out of the limestone beneath Saint-Émilion, and the eighteenth-century Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux, mirrored in the shallow water of the quay. Further on stand the clock tower of the Limoges-Bénédictins station, the iron gondola of the transporter bridge over the Charente at Rochefort, and the neo-Gothic shell of the Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers rising from its moat.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dune of Pilat | Dune | |
| 2 | La Roque-Gageac | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Cordouan Lighthouse | Lighthouse | ✓ |
| 4 | Gardens of Marqueyssac | Historic garden | |
| 5 | Pic du Midi d'Ossau | Summit | |
| 6 | Église monolithe, Saint-Émilion | Rock-cut church | |
| 7 | Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers | Castle ruin | |
| 8 | Place de la Bourse | Square | |
| 9 | Fort Boyard | Fort | |
| 10 | Lascaux Cave | Cave | ✓ |
| 11 | Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge | Transporter bridge | |
| 12 | Les Combarelles | Show cave | ✓ |
| 13 | Font-de-Gaume cave | Show cave | ✓ |
| 14 | Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe | Church building | ✓ |
| 15 | Gare de Limoges-Bénédictins | Railway station | |
| 16 | Tour de la Lanterne | Lighthouse |
01 Dune of Pilat
Dune du Pilat
France44.590° N 1.212° W
Image by weareaway from Pixabay At around 105 metres, the Dune of Pilat is the tallest sand dune in Europe, a single ridge stretching nearly three kilometres along the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux. But the number that matters more than its height is its speed: driven by onshore wind, the whole dune creeps inland by four to five metres every year.
Did you know? Until the 1930s the dune was known as Les Sabloneys; the modern name was popularised by the property developer Daniel Meller.
02 La Roque-Gageac
France44.826° N 1.183° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Manfred Heyde · CC BY-SA 3.0 La Roque-Gageac is built into its cliff, not just below it.
Did you know? The name joins the Occitan word for rock or stronghold with Gageac, from a Gallo-Roman estate of a man named Gaius.
03 Cordouan Lighthouse
France45.586° N 1.173° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Rémih · CC BY-SA 4.0 Cordouan stands on a reef about seven kilometres out to sea at the mouth of the Gironde, the estuary that carried Bordeaux's wine to the world.
Did you know? During construction the reef held a whole village: a lime kiln, a forge, a mill, a bakery, a wine store, stables and lodgings for up to fifty workers.
04 Gardens of Marqueyssac
Jardins de Marqueyssac
France44.824° N 1.163° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 Some 150,000 box shrubs, more than a century old and clipped by hand into soft, rolling mounds, cover a rocky spur high above the Dordogne, and walking among them feels like crossing a green sea frozen mid-swell.
Did you know? Between 1830 and 1840 an earlier owner added a chapel and a 100-metre alley laid out for horseback rides.
05 Pic du Midi d'Ossau
France42.843° N 0.438° W
Myrabella · CC BY-SA 3.0 Few mountains are as instantly recognisable as the Pic du Midi d'Ossau.
Did you know? The ancient caldera measured an estimated 6 to 7 kilometres across; the peak is a thickened part of its ring of intrusive rock, later tilted and raised.
06 Église monolithe, Saint-Émilion
Église monolithe de Saint-Émilion
France · 35.1 km from Bordeaux44.893° N 0.156° W
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 Beneath the squares of Saint-Émilion lies the largest underground church in Europe, hollowed out of the limestone hill on which the medieval town is built. From the market square you see only a Gothic portal and some tall windows set into the rock face, with a bell tower rising above.
Did you know? The dedicatory inscription on a nave pillar dates the consecration to the seventh day before the Ides of December, in early December.
07 Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers
France47.092° N 0.033° E
Pierre Mairé · CC BY 2.5 Few ruins look as unreal as this one.
Did you know? François de Rochechouart, marquis de Chandeniers, fell from royal favour and was exiled from court in 1655.
08 Place de la Bourse
France · 2.4 km from Bordeaux44.841° N 0.570° W
Image by JonathanRieder from Pixabay A long run of pale stone facades opens straight onto the Garonne, and in front of it a thin sheet of water lying on the paving doubles every pilaster and roofline.
Did you know? The water for the mirror is kept in an underground reservoir of about 800 cubic metres beneath the quay.
09 Fort Boyard
France · 19.2 km from La Rochelle46.000° N 1.214° W
Image by lecreusois from Pixabay Fort Boyard took fifty-six years to build and was obsolete within two.
Did you know? One of the supply ships carrying stone for the foundations sank, taking six of its crew with it.
10 Lascaux Cave
Grotte de Lascaux
France · 30.5 km from Brive-la-Gaillarde45.054° N 1.171° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Eline13Viki+ · CC0 Lascaux holds the most celebrated Ice Age paintings in the world.
Did you know? Some colours were not brushed at all but sprayed, blown through a tube onto the rock, while others were dabbed on with pads.
11 Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge
Pont transbordeur de Rochefort
France · 31.5 km from La Rochelle45.916° N 0.961° W
This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder . Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author and send me a message . This image is not in the public domain . Please respect the copyright protection. It may only be used according to the rules mentioned here. This specifically excludes use in social media , if applicable terms of the licenses listed here not appropriate. Please do not upload an updated image here without consultation with the Author. The author would like to make corrections only at his own source. This ensures that the changes are preserved. Please if you think that any changes should be required, please inform the author. Otherwise you can upload a new image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract . · CC BY-SA 3.0 The transporter bridge at Rochefort is one of the strangest and most elegant machines ever built to cross a river.
Did you know? The bridge cost 586,500 francs to build, and its gondola hangs only about two metres above the river at high water.
12 Les Combarelles
Grotte des Combarelles I
France44.944° N 1.042° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Sémhur · CC BY-SA 3.0 Les Combarelles is not a cave of great halls and painted ceilings.
13 Font-de-Gaume cave
Grotte de Font-de-Gaume
France44.935° N 1.029° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Traumrune · CC BY-SA 3.0 Font-de-Gaume holds some of the finest polychrome paintings of the Ice Age, often ranked second only to Lascaux.
Did you know? Font-de-Gaume was among the first painted caves found in the Périgord.
14 Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
Abbaye de Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
France46.565° N 0.866° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
victuallers · CC BY-SA 4.0 The abbey church at Saint-Savin, on the banks of the Gartempe in the Poitou countryside, holds one of the finest and best-preserved ensembles of Romanesque wall painting in France, and it is often called the Romanesque Sistine Chapel.
Did you know? A cobalt-blue glass vessel used as a reliquary was found under an altar in 1866; it is the only intact known example of its kind.
15 Gare de Limoges-Bénédictins
Limoges-Bénédictins
France · 1.5 km from Limoges45.836° N 1.268° E
Le train, c'est trop bien · CC BY 4.0 Few provincial towns can claim a railway station that looks like a cathedral of the machine age, but Limoges can.
Did you know? Francis Chigot's stained glass covers some 775 square metres, with chestnuts, oak leaves and acorns worked into the foliage.
16 Tour de la Lanterne
France · 1.3 km from La Rochelle46.156° N 1.157° W
Pline · CC BY-SA 3.0 The tallest of the three medieval towers that guard the Old Port of La Rochelle, the Tour de la Lanterne is both an old harbour lighthouse and a former prison whose walls are covered in the carvings of its inmates.
Did you know? Prisoners held in the tower between the 17th and 19th centuries carved more than 600 graffiti, including detailed ships.
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 Nouvelle-Aquitaine?
- On our list, Dune of Pilat ranks first, followed by La Roque-Gageac and Cordouan Lighthouse.
- How old are the Lascaux cave paintings?
- The paintings at Lascaux date from the Upper Palaeolithic, roughly 17,000 years ago. The cave was found in 1940 by four teenagers near Montignac in the Vézère valley.
- What is the tallest sand dune in Europe?
- The Dune of Pilat on the Arcachon basin is the tallest sand dune in Europe, rising about 100 metres; its height shifts over time as the wind moves the sand inland.
- What is the monolithic church of Saint-Émilion?
- It is a church carved directly into the limestone hillside beneath the village of Saint-Émilion in the Middle Ages, with its nave and aisles cut out of the rock rather than built. It is among the largest underground churches in Europe.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Nouvelle-Aquitaine?
- In our collection, the places in Nouvelle-Aquitaine are most often caves (3), show caves (2), lighthouses (2) and archaeological sites (2).
- How many places are on this list in Nouvelle-Aquitaine?
- The list covers 16 places.