“It is the colosseum of nature; it's Gavarnie "

Often the quotes of this magnificent poem by Victor Hugo are summed up a few words, at best one line ... Here it is, in Extenso - to read aloud at the foot of the giant ... 

In summer 1843, during his “trip to the Pyrenees”, Victor Hugo discovered the Cirque de Gavarnie.

A site that will mark him forever, as he will mark many Pyreneists, such as Franz Schrader who signs this engraving.

Twelve years later, he evokes the memory of Gavarnie in the long poem “God”, thus finishing the triptych started with the legend of centuries.

Under his pen, the circus becomes a gigantic amphitée, a cosmic battlefield where the voice of the creation of the world is heard.

Gavarnie

When you have passed the Dourroucats bridge and you are only a quarter of an hour of Gèdre, two mountains suddenly go away and, in whatever way you concern the approach of Gavarnie, You discover an unexpected thing. 

You may have visited the Alps, the Andes, the Cordillera; You have had the Pyrenees for a few weeks under your eyes; Whatever you could see, what you see now is like nothing about what you have encountered elsewhere. So far you have seen mountains; You have contemplated growths of all forms, of all heights; You have explored green rumps, slopes of gneiss, marble or shale, precipices, rounded or serrated peaks, glaciers, forests of fir trees mixed with clouds, granite needles, ice needles; But, I repeat, you have not seen anywhere you see right now on the horizon. 

In the middle of the capricious curves of the mountains bristling with obtuse angles and acute angles, abruptly appear straight lines, simple, calm, horizontal or vertical, parallel or cutting up with right angles, and combined so that their whole results The brilliant, real figure penetrated with azure and sun, of an impossible and extraordinary object. 

Is it a mountain? But what mountain has ever presented these rectilinear surfaces, these regular plans, these rigorous parallelisms, these strange symmetries, this geometric aspect? Is it a wall? Here are towers indeed that contrast it and support it, here are slots, these are the cornices, the architraves, the foundations and the stones that the gaze distinguishes and could almost count, these are two raw breaches and which awaken in the spirit of the ideas of seats, trenches and assaults; But these are also snow, large snow bands placed on these foundations, on these slots, on these architraves and on these towers; We are in the heart of summer and noon; They are therefore eternal snow; Now, what wall, what human architecture has ever risen to the scary level of eternal snow? Babel, the effort of the whole human race, has sagged on itself before having reached it. 

What is this inexplicable object which cannot be a mountain and which has the height of the mountains, which cannot be a wall and which has the shape of the walls? 

It is a mountain and a wall at the same time; It is the most mysterious building of the most mysterious architects; It is the colossum of nature; It's Gavarnie. 

Published this magnificent silhouette as it is first revealed at a distance of three leagues: a long and dark wall whose all the protrusion, all the wrinkles are marked by snow lines, all the platforms bear glaciers. Towards the middle, two large towers; One who is at the Levant, square and turning one of his angles to France; the other who is sunset, fluted as if it was less a tower than a wreath of turrets; Both covered in snow. On the right, two deep notches, the gaps, which cut into the wall like two vases that the clouds accuse; Finally, always on the right and at the western end, a sort of huge pleated rim of a thousand stands, which offers the eye, in monstrous proportions, what would be called in architecture the cut of an amphitheater. 

Represent yourself as I saw: the black wall, the black towers; brilliant snow, blue sky; One thing finally complete, large to the incredible, serene to the sublime. 

This is an impression that does not look like any other, so singular and so powerful at the same time that it erases everything else, and that one becomes for a few moments, even when this magic vision has disappeared in a turning point , indifferent to everything that is not her. 

The landscape around you is however admirable; You enter a valley where all the magnifies and all the graces wrap you. Two-storey villages, such as Tracy-le-Haut and Tracy-le-Bas, Gédre-Dessus and Gédre-dessous, with their staircases and their old Templar church, pelot and take place on the side of two mountains , along a white scum gave, under the cheerful and whimsical tufts of charming vegetation. All this is lively, lovely, happy, exquisite; It is Switzerland and the Black Forest that suddenly mixed with the Pyrenees. A thousand joyful noises come to you like the voices and words of this sweet landscape, bird songs, children's laughter, murmurs of the Gave, quivering leaves, soothed breaths of the wind. 

You don't see anything; You don't hear anything; Barely perceive this graceful together some doubtful and confused impression. The appearance of Gavarnie is always before your eyes, and radiates in your thought like these supernatural horizons that we sometimes see at the bottom of dreams. In the evening, coming back from Gavarnie, an admirable moment. From my window: a large mountain fills the earth; A large cloud fills the sky. Between the cloud and the mountain, a thin strip of twilight sky, clear, lively, clear, and sparkling Jupiter, golden pebble in a silver stream. Nothing more melancholy and more reassuring and more beautiful than this small point of light between these two blocks of darkness.

Victor Hugo, 1855

A colossus shaped by a glacier 20,000 years ago

"Immense stone trunk" which saw the creation of the world ... Victor Hugo was right! 20,000 years ago, there was a glacier who descended from Gavarnie to Lourdes. Its enormous mass dug the valley and carved the rock, propeling ocher and gray limestone land, more than 3000 meters above sea level.

The circus is made up of 16 concentric peaks, more than 3,000 meters above sea level : Pic du Taillon (3144 m), Pic du helmet, Pic de l'Epaule, Pic de la Tour, Pic du Marboré (3248 m), from the Gabiétou, from Astazous ... to the sublime Mont Perd (3355 m).

Only the famous “Roland breach”, with multiple legends , breaks this symmetry, offering a passage to Spain - the Gavarnie circus marks the border between the French Pyrenees, and the Aragon.

Many waterfalls plummer steep walls, the most important of which, the large cascade of Gavarnie high of 422 meters.

In 1997, the Massif du Mont Perda, of which the Gavarnie circus was a part of UNESCO World Heritage, was a double title of natural and cultural landscape - this site also marking a long tradition of pastoralism between Aragonese and French villages.

The Cirque de Gavarnie has become the meeting point of the Pyreneists - some of which have the privilege of resting in the face of this natural wonder, in the Gavarnie cemetery - illustrating in the best way, the inseparable physical experience of the mountains, to emotion Aesthetics and artistic lived in the Pyrenees.

Come and visit this wonder of nature, find the breath of the Pyreneists, staying at the Chalet La Source !