Lac du Bourget et la grotte de Lamartine

Aix-les-Bains

The largest natural glacial lake entirely within France, the Lac du Bourget stretches 18 km between the Jura massif and the Bauges, reaching a depth of 145 m. It owes its international fame to a broken love story: in October 1816, the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, then 26, met Julie Charles there, who had come to take the waters at Aix-les-Bains to treat her tuberculosis. Their romance on the lake's shores inspired Lamartine to write one of the founding texts of French Romanticism. Julie died before she could join him the following summer; from his grief was born the poem 'Le Lac,' published in 1820 in the Meditations poetiques, with its famous lines: 'O time, suspend your flight, and you, propitious hours, suspend your course!' At Bourdeau, on the lakeshore, a cave where the two lovers are said to have met still bears the name 'grotte de Lamartine.' The lake is also home to the royal abbey of Hautecombe, necropolis of the princes of Savoy. Today bordered by Aix-les-Bains and Le Bourget-du-Lac, it remains a major destination for tourism, sailing and literary pilgrimage 'in Lamartine's footsteps.'

Getting there : Accessible from the Aix-les-Bains train station (TGV) or via the A41 then A43 motorways; harbors and beaches all around the lake.

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

Ambient sound