Les Pénitents des Mées

Above the small Provençal village of Les Mées, a whole procession of stone rises from the hillside: dozens of tall, pointed pillars, crowded shoulder to shoulder along a ridge some two and a half kilometres long, the highest standing more than 100 metres above their base. Seen from the Durance valley, especially in low evening light, they look uncannily like a file of hooded figures walking in silence, and that resemblance gave them their name, the Penitents. Few rock formations in France combine such a strange silhouette with such a vivid story attached to it.

The pillars are made of a coarse conglomerate known in French as poudingue: river pebbles and gravel torn from the rising Alps and cemented together several million years ago, in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Rain and frost have since cut deep gullies into this thick layer, isolating the cones and blades that now stand above the village. Because the conglomerate is loosely bound, the shapes keep changing; in December 2019 part of one pillar broke away and fell on the edge of Les Mées. The site is a protected landscape and lies at one of the entrances to the Haute-Provence geological reserve, while the cliffs and scrub around it shelter a varied wildlife, including the eagle owl.

Local tradition explains the rocks very differently. In the best-known version of the legend, a lord returning from fighting the Saracens brought back a group of beautiful Moorish captives, and the monks of the nearby Montagne de Lure were made to escort them, hoods drawn down so as not to be tempted. When the monks could not resist lifting their eyes to look at the women, they were punished on the spot and turned to stone; some tellings credit the judgement to Saint Donat, a hermit venerated in the region. The village below, with its old lanes, fountains and chapel of Saint-Roch at the foot of the cliffs, is the starting point of a footpath that climbs up beside the pillars and along the ridge, with wide views over the Durance and towards the Montagne de Lure.

Getting there

Les Pénitents rise directly above the village of Les Mées, on the east bank of the Durance in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department. Digne-les-Bains, the department's main town, is about 21 km to the north-east. The nearest railway station is Château-Arnoux–Saint-Auban, on the line between Marseille and Briançon, a few kilometres up the valley. Toulon-Hyères Airport (TLN) is about 104 km away, but the more practical air gateway is Marseille Provence Airport (MRS), roughly 90 km to the south-west, which is linked to the Durance valley by the A51 motorway.