Cirque de Gavarnie

At the head of a quiet Pyrenean valley the mountains stop being slopes and become architecture. The Cirque de Gavarnie is a glacial amphitheatre carved into the limestone of the French–Spanish frontier: roughly 800 metres across at its floor, about three kilometres wide along the rim, and walled by cliffs that climb close to 1,500 metres above the visitor standing at their base. The walls rise in three great tiers, each separated by a ledge, so the whole face reads like the stepped seating of an arena turned inside out. Victor Hugo, who knew the place, called it at once a mountain and a rampart, and the comparison with a colosseum built by nature has followed it ever since.

The rim is a procession of high summits. Pic du Marboré is the highest of them, at 3,248 metres, flanked by the Casque and the Tour du Marboré and by the Astazou peaks; small relict glaciers still cling to the upper ledges. Nearby, the skyline is broken by the Brèche de Roland, a sharp notch about 2,800 metres up that local legend credits to a stroke of the sword of Roland, Charlemagne's nephew. On the Spanish side the same limestone massif continues into Ordesa and Monte Perdido, and the two together were inscribed by UNESCO in 1997 as the Pyrénées – Mont Perdu World Heritage Site. The cirque also lies within the Pyrénées National Park, founded in 1967.

The centrepiece is the Grande Cascade. It drops 422 metres in a series of leaps down the back wall and is counted among the tallest waterfalls in Europe. The valley floor sits at about 1,570 metres, and its meadows hold martagon lilies in the pine woods and saxifrages on the rock, while Pyrenean chamois work the ledges above. Every summer the cirque becomes a stage in a more literal sense: the Festival de Gavarnie puts on open-air theatre with the walls as backdrop, drawing around ten thousand spectators.

Getting there

The cirque rises above the small village of Gavarnie, at the head of its valley. The nearest town of size is Lourdes, about 45 km to the north, and the nearest airport is Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées (LDE), around 54 km away. A regional liO bus runs from the Lourdes bus station to Gavarnie, a ride of a little over an hour. From the village a well-trodden path of about four kilometres leads to the Hôtellerie du Cirque at the foot of the walls, roughly an hour and a quarter on foot each way; reaching the base of the Grande Cascade takes about another half hour over rougher ground.