Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy
Monument
Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy, located in Sévrier (Département 74), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Renaissance (16th century)
- Location
- Sévrier, Département 74, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 45.8532, 6.1513
- Mérimée Reference
- PA74000017
Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Annecy, Les Mongets reveals a Bronze Age village dating back 3,800 years: intact wooden piles and a striking urban layout, listed as a Historic Monument.
History
One of the best-kept secrets of Alpine prehistory lies at the bottom of Lake Annecy, just a few metres from the shore. The Mongets archaeological site is a village on stilts - a palafitte - built in the 19th and 18th centuries BC, during the Early Bronze Age. Invisible from the surface to the ordinary walker, it is only revealed to archaeological divers and researchers equipped with sonar, but its reality is striking: wooden stakes driven into the mud, preserved by the anaerobic conditions of the lake, still outline the precise contours of disappeared dwellings. What makes the Mongets absolutely unique is the exceptional quality of their architectural legibility. Where other lakeside sites offer only scattered fragments, Les Mongets offers a coherent spatial organisation, comparable - a rarity for this period - to the plan of the first village of Concise-sous-Colachoz, on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland. This cross-border analogy bears witness to a shared material culture across the western Alps, a network of lakeside communities that extended well beyond today's borders. The late discovery of the site - reported only in 1989 - adds a romantic dimension to the story of Les Mongets. For thousands of years, under the sailboats and pedalos, an entire village lay in wait. Underwater prospecting campaigns carried out since then have gradually revealed the extent and complexity of the site, reshaping our understanding of the prehistoric settlement of the Annecy basin. For visitors to Les Mongets, the experience is necessarily indirect, but no less powerful for that. From the shore at Sévrier, gazing out over the clear waters of the lake, you can let your imagination run wild: bronze-encrusted families rising from their wooden floors, boats gliding between the pilings, the sound of bronze tools echoing on the water. The Musée-Château d'Annecy and the Musée de Préhistoire du Lac d'Annecy in Clusy are essential landmarks for understanding this sunken world. The natural setting adds a final layer of emotion: Lake Annecy, reputed to be one of the purest in Europe, is so transparent that sometimes, in ideal conditions of light and calm, you can glimpse the dark silhouettes of the piles from a boat. A moment of direct connection with the Bronze Age, without museum glass or explanatory panels.
Architecture
The architecture of the Mongets is that of the Alpine palafittes of the Early Bronze Age: plank platforms resting on networks of vertical piles driven into the lake bed, supporting timber-framed dwellings with cob walls and thatch or bark roofs. Although no superstructure has been preserved, the layout of the piles - the density and arrangement of which have been noted by archaeologists - makes it possible to reconstruct a coherent village plan, with rectangular housing units aligned along clearly identifiable circulation routes. A comparison with the village of Concise-sous-Colachoz is particularly instructive from an architectural point of view: as in Neuchâtel, the Mongets seem to have favoured an orthogonal layout, with houses of standardised dimensions - probably between 6 and 10 metres long and 4 to 6 metres wide - separated by alleys providing access to the riverbanks. The supporting piles, made of oak, alder or ash depending on their structural location, sometimes show traces of cutting with a bronze adze, an emblematic tool of this period. The quality of conservation of the wood immersed in the mud of Lake Annecy is remarkable: unlike terrestrial sites where wood disappears in a few centuries, the anoxic environment of the lake bed has inhibited the action of aerobic decomposing bacteria, preserving the texture, the joints and sometimes even the tool marks on the piles. It is precisely this exceptional conservation that gives the Mongets their scientific value and their outstanding heritage interest.
Related Figures
Communautés de l'Âge du Bronze ancien du bassin annécien (XIXe-XVIIIe s. av. J.-C.) — fondateurs et habitants du village palafitte des MongetsArchéologues prospecteurs (1989) — découvreurs anonymes du site, plongeurs ou chercheurs ayant signalé les premiers vestigesÉquipes de la DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes — responsables des campagnes d'étude et de documentation subaquatique depuis les années 1990Frédéric Médard et collaborateurs — spécialistes des textiles et matières organiques des sites lacustres alpins ayant contribué à la connaissance des cultures Bronze lacustresMichel Egloff — archéologue suisse pionnier des études sur les palafittes du lac de Neuchâtel, dont les travaux sur Concise-sous-Colachoz éclairent la comparaison avec les Mongets
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy located?
Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy is located in Sévrier, Département 74 department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France.
When was Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy built?
Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy open to visitors?
Site archéologique des Mongets immergé dans le lac d'Annecy is currently closed to visitors.