Lac d'Issarlès

Le Lac-d'Issarlès

Almost perfectly circular, Lake Issarlès fills a maar crater hollowed out some 80,000 years ago by a steam explosion where magma met the water table. With 108 metres of depth for a diameter of about 1.5 km, it is the largest lake in the Massif Central and the third deepest natural lake in France; the lake has been a protected site since 1935. This too-regular shape has fed, across the whole Ardèche plateau, the conviction that a town sleeps beneath the waters. Tradition tells that a beggar, in truth Christ himself, came to test the charity of the people of Issarlès and, turned away everywhere except by a woman milking her goat, announced the drowning of the city. A variant makes the beggar an ill-received pilgrim to Compostela, followed by a torrential rain. The story was collected in the 19th century by the folklorist Victor Smith in the journal Mélusine, and taken up in the 20th century in Jean-Marc Gardès's Contes et légendes du plateau ardéchois. Even today, divers claim to make out debris and the silhouettes of the woman and her goat in the eastern part of the lake; no underwater excavation has ever documented the slightest ruin.

Monde légendaire - La légende du lac d'Issarlès ↗

Getting there : In the commune of Le Lac-d'Issarlès, on the Ardèche plateau between Coucouron and Le Béage, an hour from Le Puy-en-Velay. Access road from the village, car park and beach laid out on the southern shore. The coordinates given correspond to the centre of the lake; the village and the beach are a few hundred metres away. Supervised bathing in summer, path around the lake. Note: the water level varies greatly, as EDF has been drawing off the water to the Montpezat-sous-Bauzon power station since 1954.

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

Ambient sound