Carnac Stones

Who this place suits

With family

9/10

As a couple

9/10

With friends

9/10

Solo

10/10

With a dog

8/10

Reduced mobility

6/10

These scores are calculated from what the page records: official rating, facilities, difficulty, duration and location. They are a guide, not a substitute for contacting the venue, especially about accessibility.

About

Le Ménec, Kermario, Le Manio, Kerlescan: nearly 3,000 standing stones (menhirs) raised over four kilometres, in the heathland and meadows of southern Morbihan. It is the largest group of stone rows in the world, and you do not visit it like a monument: you walk through it. At Le Ménec, one thousand and fifty stones in eleven rows, and a village that grew up inside the old enclosure of seventy-one blocks. At Kermario, one thousand and twenty-nine menhirs, the first of them more than three metres tall. At Le Manio, the Giant stands guard at six and a half metres, the tallest at Carnac. At Kerlescan, the smallest of the three fields but the best preserved, the rows fan out in front of an almost square enclosure. Recent excavations date these stones to between 4800 and 3500 BC. They are older than the pyramids and Stonehenge, raised by Neolithic societies that did not know metal: farmers and herders who shaped stone, fired pottery and sailed, and who still moved blocks weighing dozens of tonnes. No one knows how long the work lasted, a few years or several centuries. What were the stone rows for? A sanctuary, a territorial marker, a tribute to the dead, a celestial calendar: there has never been a shortage of theories, none has been proven, and UNESCO itself says that we do not know. What archaeology does establish is that nothing here happened by chance. The rows follow the relief and the watercourses, the sizes of the stones answer one another, and the rows run over older burial mounds that they incorporate. One certainty about what they are not: the druids had nothing to do with them; they belong to Celtic societies, several thousand years later. The stones have been listed as historic monuments since 1889, and the French State bought most of the land to protect it from quarries and building. The fences put up between 1991 and 1993 are not there to make you pay: they let the archaeological ground and the heathland recover after decades of free trampling. Around a hundred Landes de Bretagne sheep now graze nearly seventy hectares of heath, meadow and pine woods, where a 2019 survey recorded one hundred and sixty-seven plant species and seventy-two bird species. UNESCO has inscribed the whole site on the World Heritage List, the first site located entirely in Brittany. The visit takes a little effort. From April to September, you can only go in among the stones with a guide; from October to March, some fields reopen for free access, depending on the state of the ground and whether the flocks are there. But the outer path runs along the four kilometres all year round, free of charge, as does the Maison des mégalithes and its exhibition. So you can see everything without paying anything, and it is at daybreak, when the mist still lingers between the rows, that the silence of six thousand years is best heard.

What you will see

• The largest group of stone rows in the world: nearly 3,000 menhirs over four kilometres, from Le Ménec to Kerlescan. The Centre des monuments nationaux counts about 2,800 still visible, the difference coming from fallen or vanished stones.
• Stones raised between 4800 and 3500 BC, older than the pyramids and Stonehenge, by societies that did not know metal.
• Le Ménec: 1,050 menhirs in eleven rows over 1,165 metres, and an enclosure of seventy-one blocks inside which a village grew up over the centuries.
• Kermario: 1,029 menhirs in ten rows over 1,200 metres, the most imposing blocks on the site, and a dolmen at the western end.
• The Giant of Le Manio, six and a half metres, the tallest standing menhir at Carnac, and the nearby Quadrilateral, which surrounded a burial mound that has since disappeared.
• Kerlescan: 555 menhirs in thirteen fan-shaped rows, the best preserved of the three fields, with its enclosure of thirty-nine stones and its ninety-eight metre mound.

Practical information

Best time

Morning for the cool air and parking, late afternoon for the low light across the rows of stones. Spring and autumn avoid the summer crowds.

Frequently asked questions

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