Trou de Bozouls

The Trou de Bozouls is a village built on the rim of an abyss. Here the little river Dourdou, flowing across the limestone plateau of the Causse Comtal north of Rodez, has cut a deep horseshoe-shaped bend into the rock: a natural amphitheatre about 400 metres across and some 100 metres deep. Houses line the top of the cliffs on both sides, and in the middle of the loop a narrow spur of rock juts out like the prow of a ship, carrying the old church and the oldest part of the village. Seen from the opposite rim, the whole place looks like a fortress the river designed for itself.

The canyon was carved over a very long time as the river cut down through soft Jurassic limestone, its meander biting ever deeper into the plateau. On the floor of the gorge the Dourdou drops over a small waterfall into a pool known as the Gourg d'Enfer, the Hell's Pool, before winding round the base of the spur. The steep walls are banded with layers of stone and softened by trees, and the gorge is protected as a sensitive natural area.

The first village grew up on the spur around the 9th century, a natural stronghold guarded on three sides by the drop, and in the Middle Ages a castle of the counts of Rodez stood on it. The castle has gone, but the spur is still called le Château, and on it stands the Romanesque church of Sainte-Fauste, built in the 12th century of warm reddish sandstone with a nave of five bays and an ambulatory around the choir. Local legend says the devil himself dug the hole, hoping to send the church tumbling into the void, and failed.

The gorge was once counted among the seven wonders of the Rouergue, the historic province that is now the Aveyron. Later houses spread along the right bank of the Dourdou and up onto the cliff tops, so that today the village wraps all the way around the chasm, and the view from the terraces on the rim takes in the whole loop at once.

Getting there

The Trou de Bozouls lies in the village of Bozouls in the Aveyron, about 17.5 km north-east of Rodez. Rodez has a railway station with trains from Toulouse, and Rodez–Aveyron Airport (RDZ) is about 20 km away. From Rodez the village is reached by road across the Causse Comtal.