Lac d'Aiguebelette

Saint-Alban-de-Montbel

Aiguebelette is a glacial lake set deep at the foot of the Épine massif, with warm green waters, protected since 1967 from all combustion engines and, in 2015, made the first regional freshwater nature reserve in France. In its southern part rise two small islands fringed with reed beds, probably of morainic origin: it is these that the legend explains. The Savoyard tale has it that a rich and proud city once occupied the basin; a beggar in rags — Christ himself, in the Christian version — came there and was turned away from door to door. A poor widow and her daughter, alone, took him in and shared their bread. The next day, the waters engulfed the town and its inhabitants, while the two charitable houses and the path that joined them remained above water: these are the lake's two islands. The legend belongs to a family of tales of punitive drowning very widespread in the Alps, where glacial geography is read as a moral sanction. The shores have yielded traces of very ancient lakeside occupation, including a wooden stake more than 4,000 years old kept at the Lac et Nature museum in Novalaise — nothing that matches a drowned city, but enough for the memory of dwellings lost beneath the water not to be without foundation.

Lac d'Aiguebelette — Wikipédia ↗

Getting there : Leave the A43 at the Épine tunnel, then take the D921, which circles the lake (about fifteen kilometres); TER railway stations at Lépin-le-Lac and Aiguebelette-le-Lac. Several managed beaches, with a charge in summer. Combustion-engine boats have been banned since a bylaw of 1967, which explains the calm of the water. The coordinates mark the centre of the lake, which borders five communes.

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

Ambient sound