Menhir
MonumentHidden Treasure
Menhir, located in Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché (Département 22), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché, Département 22, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 48.2469, -2.9616
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00089628
Sentinelle de pierre dressée depuis le Néolithique au cœur du Kreiz-Breizh, ce menhir classé Monument Historique veille sur les collines de Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché depuis plus de 5 000 ans.
History
In the heart of Kreiz-Breizh, a region of central Brittany where moorland and beech forests compete with the steep ridges of the Montagnes Noires, the menhir of Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché rises with sovereign discretion. Raised by human hands at the dawn of agricultural civilisation in Western Europe, it belongs to the constellation of Breton megaliths that make the Armorican peninsula one of the densest megalithic territories in the world. What sets this menhir apart from the more spectacular alignments at Carnac or the famous dolmens in Morbihan is precisely its solitude and its place in a virtually untouched rural landscape. Here, there are no tourist attractions or crowds: the stone stands in its age-old nakedness, planted in a soil that Neolithic farmers one day chose to mark with their presence. This quality of isolation gives the visit a rare, almost mystical, contemplative dimension. The menhir belongs to the tradition of Armorican standing stones - monoliths made of local granite that Neolithic societies erected for ritual, funerary, territorial and perhaps astronomical reasons. Its slender silhouette, typical of the megalithic structures found in Central Brittany, contrasts with the open horizon that surrounds it, reinforcing the hypothesis that it played a role as a landscape or ceremonial marker. To visit this monument is to agree to slow down. The commune of Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché, nestling between the valleys of the Blavet and Gouët rivers, offers a serene setting of hedged farmland and woodland. Lovers of prehistory, photographers in search of low-angled light and hikers plying the trails of the Kreiz-Breizh will all find this a truly intense place to stop off. Its protection as a Historic Monument since 1974 guarantees the preservation of this silent witness to Brittany's oldest humanity.
Architecture
The menhir at Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché is a monolith of Armorican granite, the dominant rock in the Breton subsoil, whose robustness and resistance to erosion explain the remarkable longevity of the region's megaliths. Like most of the menhirs in Central Brittany, it has an elongated shape, tapering slightly towards the top, characteristic of the products of this geographical area, where Neolithic quarrymen worked fine-grained granite veins particularly well-suited to carving slender monoliths. Its estimated height, typical of isolated menhirs in this area, probably varies between two and four metres above ground, with the base buried over around a third of its total length to ensure its stability over thousands of years. From a morphological point of view, the surface of the menhir bears the marks of time: grey and orange lichens colonise its north-facing face, while the originally carved edges have gradually become rounded under the effect of the freezing and thawing cycles typical of the Breton climate. No rock carvings have been documented on this menhir, unlike some Armorican monuments which bear schematic representations of axes, crooks or snakes. This lack of ornament reinforces its austere, primitive character, in keeping with the megalithic practices of Kreiz-Breizh, which were less inclined towards decoration than the workshops of Morbihan. The siting of the menhir in the landscape is probably dictated by its visibility and intervisibility with other remarkable points in the area: hilltops, springs, river confluences or other megaliths. This spatial logic, common to the whole of Armorican megalithism, means that the menhir is not an isolated object but the hub of a landscape network that has now been partially lost, and whose reconstruction is one of the challenges of contemporary Breton archaeology.
Related Figures
Les communautés agropastorales néolithiques du Kreiz-Breizh (4500-2500 av. J.-C.) — bâtisseurs anonymes du menhirLes moines évangélisateurs bretons des Ve-VIe siècles, tel saint Gilles, dont le nom est associé à la communeProsper Mérimée, inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques au XIXe siècle, initiateur du recensement des mégalithes bretonsZacharie Le Rouzic, archéologue breton (1864-1939), pionnier de l'étude systématique des mégalithes armoricainsLes érudits de la Société d'émulation des Côtes-du-Nord (XIXe siècle), premiers à recenser et décrire les menhirs du département
Tags
Nearby castles
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Menhir located?
Menhir is located in Saint-Gilles-Vieux-Marché, Département 22 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Menhir open to visitors?
Menhir is currently closed to visitors.
