Dolmen dit Le Carroir Bon Air
MonumentHidden Treasure
Dolmen dit Le Carroir Bon Air, located in Ligré (Indre-et-Loire), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Ligré, Indre-et-Loire, Centre-Val de Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.1143, 0.2731
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00097808
A discreet Neolithic vestige nestling in the Touraine bocage, Carroir Bon Air in Ligré is one of the few listed dolmens in Indre-et-Loire, bearing witness to a sacred territory over 5,000 years old.
© Wikimedia Commons
History
In the heart of the Chinon region, a few leagues from the Vienne river and its tufa rock hillsides, the dolmen known as Le Carroir Bon Air have watched over the Ligré area for thousands of years. This Neolithic funerary monument, listed as one of France's first Historic Monuments in 1889, is one of a constellation of megaliths dotting Touraine and the Saumur region, revealing an ancient and organised human occupation well before the Celtic or Gallo-Roman civilisations. What makes this dolmen so special is its setting in an unspoilt rural landscape, far from the main tourist routes. The Ligré region, between the Vienne and Manse valleys, is particularly rich in prehistoric remains, with Neolithic communities having exploited the local flint and limestone resources to build their funerary and ritual architecture. The Carroir Bon Air is part of this territorial logic, probably located on an axis of circulation or symbolic demarcation of the territory. Visiting the dolmen is a very sober, almost meditative experience. The absence of any museographic display allows for direct, authentic contact with the stone, a silent confrontation with the long history of mankind. The limestone slabs, covered in golden lichen and moss, exude an atmosphere of contemplation, disturbed only by the bocage wind. The rural setting of Ligré, part of the Chinon Vienne et Loire Community of Municipalities, adds to the appeal of the visit. The paths leading to the monument pass through vineyards, hedgerows and meadows, in a Touraine landscape that has remained surprisingly unspoilt. Walkers will be happy to combine a visit to the dolmen with an exploration of the surrounding valleys and the characteristic troglodyte caves of the region.
Architecture
Carroir Bon Air has the characteristic morphology of the simple dolmens of western France: a burial chamber delimited by several orthostats - vertical slabs of local limestone - supporting one or more horizontal cover tables. This architectural type, known as a "corridor dolmen" or "simple dolmen" depending on the configuration of the supports, is abundantly represented in the Loire corridor between Anjou and Touraine, where tufa or lacustrine limestone outcrops in large, easily quarried slabs. The materials used are exclusively local: whitish to yellowish limestone quarried from the surrounding plateaux, a material that Neolithic builders mastered perfectly, knowing how to identify the geological levels most suitable for cutting large slabs. The blocks, which could be several metres long and weigh several tonnes, were transported from nearby quarries, then straightened and assembled without any binding agent, using only their balance and rudimentary mechanical skills. The burial chamber, oriented on an east-west axis as often required by Neolithic symbolism linked to the rising sun, must originally have been covered by a mound of earth and dry stone that completely concealed the structure. The 'bare' appearance of the dolmen today - slabs standing upright in the vegetation - is the result of thousands of years of erosion and human damage that has swept away the tumulus mantle. Only the stone framework has survived, reducing what was a complex funerary architecture to its mineral skeleton.
Related Figures
Prosper Mérimée — inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques, pionnier de l'inventaire du patrimoine préhistorique français au XIXe siècleAdrien de Mortillet — préhistorien français ayant contribué à la classification des mégalithes de la Loire au XIXe siècleLes bâtisseurs néolithiques du Chinonais — communautés agricoles anonymes de la culture Cerny ou du groupe angevin, vers 4000-3000 av. J.-C.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Dolmen dit Le Carroir Bon Air located?
Dolmen dit Le Carroir Bon Air is located in Ligré, Indre-et-Loire department, Centre-Val de Loire region, France.
Is Dolmen dit Le Carroir Bon Air open to visitors?
Dolmen dit Le Carroir Bon Air is currently closed to visitors.