Allée couverte dite Er-Roh
MonumentHidden Treasure
Allée couverte dite Er-Roh, located in La Trinité-sur-Mer (Département 56), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- La Trinité-sur-Mer, Département 56, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.5910, -3.0321
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00091766
A Neolithic vestige buried deep in the Morbihan, the Er-Roh covered walkway erects its 5,000-year-old granite slabs just a stone's throw from the Atlantic, a silent testimony to the megalith builders of Brittany.
History
In La Trinité-sur-Mer, a village world-famous for its sailing boats and regattas, lies a vestige of an altogether different kind: the Er-Roh covered walkway, a funerary monument erected some five millennia ago by the Neolithic peoples who populated the Morbihan coastline at the time. Far from the fame of Carnac and its alignments, Er-Roh retains a rare, almost secret aura of intimacy, making it one of the most moving encounters the Quiberon peninsula has to offer. The building belongs to the family of covered walkways, collective burials characteristic of the Late Neolithic (between around 3,500 and 2,500 BC) found in large numbers in Finistère and Morbihan. The structure consists of an elongated gallery made up of large orthostats - slabs standing vertically - crowned by horizontal roof tables, all fashioned from local granite, a rock that is omnipresent in this land of moors and jagged coastlines. The robustness of the material explains why the whole structure has survived the millennia without major collapse. To visit Er-Roh is to agree to slow down. The monument is not open to the casual visitor: it invites you to kneel down, to observe the way the slabs fit together without mortar, to imagine the funeral rites and offerings that once enlivened this stone corridor. The low-angled morning and evening light, so common under the changing Morbihan skies, reveals the textures of the granite and lends the site a magnetic atmosphere. The natural setting reinforces this timeless impression. The proximity of the sea, the scent of iodine and gorse, the seagulls hovering over the muddy fields of the Crac'h river: everything helps to anchor Er-Roh in a Breton landscape of absolute coherence, where the present and the Neolithic are superimposed with disconcerting fluidity. Megalith enthusiasts, photographers in search of unusual lighting and curious families will all find something to suit them.
Architecture
The Er-Roh covered walkway has the characteristic morphology of this type of Neolithic funerary monument: an elongated gallery, generally oriented east-west or north-east-south-west, bounded laterally by facing granite orthostats and closed at one end by a bedside slab. Solid granite covering slabs rest horizontally on these walls, forming a continuous ceiling over the entire burial chamber. The typical length of this type of Morbihan covered walkway varies between eight and fifteen metres, with an interior width of around one to one and a half metres. The granite used comes from local outcrops, which are abundant in this sector of the Quiberon peninsula. The slabs were roughly squared, without fine polishing, to ensure maximum load-bearing capacity while preserving the natural cohesion of the rock. Assembly is based on a principle of wedging and counterweights: the orthostats are driven into the ground to a sufficient depth to remain stable under the weight of the covering tables, some of which can weigh several tonnes. No binders are used, the precision of the adjustment alone ensuring the solidity of the whole. Like most of the covered walkways in Brittany, Er-Roh was originally covered by a mound of earth and stones that masked the structure and gave the monument the appearance of an artificial hill. Erosion over several millennia has largely removed this protective mantle, exposing the stone slabs and giving the site its present-day appearance of a lapidary skeleton. Some of the covering slabs may have shifted slightly over the centuries, but the overall structure has remained remarkably intact, testifying to the quality of design of these anonymous Neolithic architects.
Related Figures
Populations néolithiques du littoral morbihannais (bâtisseurs du monument, Ve-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.)Prosper Mérimée (inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques, pionnier de la protection du patrimoine mégalithique breton au XIXe siècle)James Miln (archéologue écossais, fouilles de Carnac et de la région au XIXe siècle, contribuant à la documentation des mégalithes morbihannais)Zacharie Le Rouzic (archéologue et conservateur du musée de Préhistoire de Carnac, inventaire des mégalithes de la région au début du XXe siècle)Inspecteurs des Monuments Historiques (responsables du classement d'Er-Roh le 11 septembre 1929)
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Allée couverte dite Er-Roh located?
Allée couverte dite Er-Roh is located in La Trinité-sur-Mer, Département 56 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Allée couverte dite Er-Roh open to visitors?
Allée couverte dite Er-Roh is currently closed to visitors.