Allée couverte
MonumentHidden Treasure
Allée couverte, located in Plescop (Département 56), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Plescop, Département 56, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.6931, -2.8804
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00091474
A Neolithic relic on the outskirts of Vannes, this covered walkway in Plescop reveals the secrets of a 5,000-year-old megalithic civilisation, sculpting the Breton moors with its rough, silent stone architecture.
History
On the edge of the commune of Plescop, in the Morbihan region which boasts one of the highest densities of megaliths in the world, stands a covered walkway whose sobriety is equalled only by its evocative power. A collective funerary monument erected by the farming peoples of the Neolithic period, between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, it belongs to that vast family of burial sites that the Bretons sometimes call "fairy caves" or "houses of the dead", silent witnesses to a social and spiritual organisation of unsuspected sophistication. What distinguishes this type of monument within the Armorican megalithic landscape is above all its hybrid function: a collective burial chamber designed to house the bones of several generations, but also a ritual space where the community maintained a living link with its ancestors. The slabs of local granite, carefully selected and set in place, reveal an astonishing technical mastery for an era without metal tools. Each stone seems to have been chosen for its solidity, capable of withstanding the test of time. To visit the covered walkway at Plescop is to agree to slow down. The experience is played out in the intimacy of the monument, when you perceive the architectural logic of the aligned orthostats, the way the grazing morning or evening light transforms the grainy surfaces of the granite into maps of shadow and relief. Attentive visitors will notice the arrangement of the lateral supports and the covering tables, characteristic of the Armorican covered walkways, as distinct from the corridor dolmens in the Carnac region. The surrounding area, typical of the eastern fringe of the Vannes region, offers a hedged landscape with heather and golden broom depending on the season. Its proximity to Vannes, the historic capital of Morbihan just a few kilometres to the south-east, means that this monument is part of a wider circuit dedicated to Brittany's megalithic heritage, from the Golfe du Morbihan to the alignments of Carnac. It's a stop-off that's less a tourist attraction than an intimate, silent encounter with the first builders of this land.
Architecture
The covered alleyway at Plescop is typical of collective megalithic burials in Neolithic Brittany. Its structure is based on a simple but remarkably effective architectural principle: a series of orthostats - large slabs of granite standing vertically - arranged in two parallel rows, forming the walls of a funerary corridor, on which rest heavy horizontal cover slabs known as tables or hats. The whole structure delimits an elongated, slightly trapezoidal interior space, which could be several metres long according to the best-preserved examples of this type in Morbihan. Armorican granite, a magmatic rock with exceptional mechanical properties, is the only material used for the monument. Its hardness and resistance to chemical erosion explain why the structure has survived for five millennia. The builders probably selected their blocks from natural outcrops or nearby granite chaos, before transporting and erecting them using systems of levers, earth ramps and organised collective labour. The surfaces of the slabs sometimes show traces of partial polishing, testifying to meticulous finishing work. In terms of architectural features, Armorican covered walkways are distinguished from corridor dolmens by the absence of a clearly differentiated final chamber: the gallery alone constitutes the burial space. Some regional examples also have a bedside slab closing off the end of the corridor and, at the opposite end, an entrance slab pierced with a circular hole known as a 'porthole', symbolically allowing passage between the world of the living and that of the dead. Although the current state of conservation of the Plescop site means that it is not always possible to identify all these features with certainty, it is fully in keeping with the megalithic architectural tradition of the inland Morbihan.
Related Figures
Les communautés néolithiques de l'arrière-pays vannetais (IVe-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.) — bâtisseurs anonymes du monumentProsper Mérimée (1803-1870) — inspecteur général des Monuments historiques, pionnier de la préservation des mégalithes bretonsZacharie Le Rouzic (1864-1939) — archéologue et conservateur du musée de Carnac, figure centrale de l'étude des mégalithes morbihannaisJames Miln (1819-1881) — archéologue écossais dont les fouilles à Carnac ont ouvert la voie à l'étude scientifique de la mégalithie armoricaineRené Galles (1820-1882) — érudit vannetais, l'un des premiers à recenser et décrire les monuments mégalithiques du Morbihan
Tags
Nearby castles
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Allée couverte located?
Allée couverte is located in Plescop, Département 56 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Allée couverte open to visitors?
Allée couverte is currently closed to visitors.
