Chaos de Montpellier-le-Vieux

The Chaos de Montpellier-le-Vieux is a ruined city that nobody built. On the Causse Noir plateau above the gorges of the Dourbie, some 120 hectares of dolomite have weathered into towers, arches, alleys, pinnacles and walls so architectural in their arrangement that shepherds once took the place for the remains of an abandoned town. Many of the rocks carry names — the Porte de Mycènes, a great natural archway; the Arc de Triomphe; the Sphinx; the Cathedral; the Bear's Head; the Douminal, the highest point of the chaos — and paths thread between them, opening onto wide views over the plateaus and canyons of the Grands Causses.

The rock is Jurassic in origin, laid down as limestone and dolomite on the bed of a warm, shallow tropical sea. Around 100 million years ago tectonic pressure fractured these layers into a network of faults, and in the Tertiary, as the Alps and the Pyrenees rose, the whole sedimentary block was lifted without folding into the high, flat tablelands of the Causses. Exposed to the air, the dolomite was attacked by karstic erosion, which dissolved and widened the cracks until only the hardest masses remained standing as separate blocks — the classic ruiniform relief of the region.

People have used the site for more than eight thousand years: rock shelters, sheepfolds and ruined cisterns record human presence since the early Neolithic, and in Gallo-Roman times its forests were cut for firewood and resin. The name comes from the Occitan "Lo Clapàs Vièlh", the old heap of stones; "lo Clapàs" was also the popular nickname of the city of Montpellier, and the word for "old" doubled as a name for the Devil in local stories. A well-known legend tells of three fairies who built the stone city as a refuge, its maze of streets confusing the demon giant who pursued them until he gave up the chase. The caver and geographer Édouard-Alfred Martel explored the chaos in 1884 and drew its first map the following year, and in 1886 the first mule paths were opened from the village of La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite below. The site, protected since 1993 and today also known as the Cité de Pierres, lies within the Grands Causses Regional Natural Park; it appears in a famous scene of the 1966 comedy La Grande Vadrouille, filmed at the Porte de Mycènes.

Getting there

Montpellier-le-Vieux lies in the commune of La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite in Aveyron, about 11 km northeast of Millau and its viaduct. The nearest airport is Rodez–Aveyron Airport (RDZ), about 65 km away.