Lac de Vouglans et la chartreuse engloutie de Vaucluse

Onoz

Founded in 1139 in the gorges of the Ain, the charterhouse of Vaucluse lived through six centuries of monastic life, punctuated by rebuilding in the 18th century (1756–1757, 1766, 1787), before being plundered in 1790 and seeing its property confiscated in 1791. Its final fate is unique in France: the building of the Vouglans dam, begun in the mid-1960s, drowned some 35 km of valley in 1968. The monastery, the hamlet of Brillat and several outlying farms vanished beneath the waters; the ruins lie between 45 and 70 metres below the highest water level, and only the gateway and the entrance pavilions, re-erected above the level of the lake, bear witness to it in the open air. Divers describe astonishingly well-preserved remains, and oral tradition has done the rest: it is said that a drowned city, punished for its opulence, reappears only every hundred years in times of great drought, that a bell tower can be glimpsed beneath the surface, and that a guardian cockerel crows from the depths every Christmas Eve at midnight. In 2018, fifty years after the filling of the reservoir, drought really did bring the low walls, bridge and well of the hamlet of Brillat back to light. In 2008, 276 bottles of wine were even sunk among the ruins, one case to be raised every twenty years.

Getting there : Belvederes, beaches and water-sports centres laid out around the lake (Pont de la Pyle and Moirans-en-Montagne sectors); the remains of the charterhouse, submerged off Onoz, cannot be visited.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound