Hôtié de Viviane

Paimpont

On the heath, at the point from which one looks down over the whole Val sans Retour, twelve slabs of red schist trace out a chest of three metres by one and a half, one metre forty high, which was the heart of a cairn now levelled. The excavations by Jacques Briard, in 1982 and 1983, carried out within the programme to save the Val, dated the monument to the final Neolithic, around 3000 before our era, with later reoccupations; the cairn was buried again to protect it. Félix Bellamy, who was the first to describe it, in 1896, says it was known as the druids' tomb and as the Hôtié — the "house" — of Viviane. The name came to it around 1850, when the Val sans Retour was moved near Tréhorenteuc: in 1824 Blanchard de la Musse, a scholar fed on Celtomania, had installed the Val in the valley of La Marette, near Merlin's tomb, placed the tombs of Merlin and of his wife Viviane on the height above it, and made Comper the pavilion of Morgan. The fairy is said to have held Merlin enchanted there, or to have lived there; the prose romances of the 13th century, which have Viviane born in the forest of Briosque, at the castle of her father Dyonas, know neither a house of stone nor a heath of Rauco. Philippe Walter sees in it an "ancient memory" with no direct link to the texts; Marcel Calvez, an example of the legendary topography invented from the 1820s onwards. What the visitor sees, in any case, is authentic: a tomb five thousand years old, and one of the finest viewpoints in the forest.

Wikipédia — Hotié de Viviane ↗

Getting there : From Tréhorenteuc, the Val sans Retour car park, then the waymarked path that climbs the heath of Rauco (allow 30 to 40 minutes' climb one way, walking shoes). Free access; a fragile site, do not climb on the slabs.

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

Ambient sound