Neolithic cairn at Barnenez, Brittany

This is a massive cairn, thought to date back to about the year 4,500 B.C.  Its hilltop location provides wonderful views of the surrounding landscape and coast.  This indicates that the structure was of major religious or cultural importance to the nearby communities or villages.

It shelters 11 separate chambers, which may well have been burial chambers; however, the acidity of the soil would have destroyed any bones placed in them.

The site, hitherto buried, was discovered in the 1950s.  The farmer who owned the land was using the stones as a quarry!  This photo shows the quarried area at one end of the cairn: the quarrying had laid bare a cross-section of four of the cairn's chambers.  The original extent of the cairn here is indicated by the line of stones in the foreground.  (The rest of the cairn is intact.)

The cairn is over 70 metres long, about 25 metres wide and over 8 metres high.  Its entire structure is dry-stone, i e of stones placed on top of one another without any mortar.  The corbelled dry-stone roofs of the chambers are up to 4.5 metres high - just look at the detail of the partly destroyed first chamber from left - an impressive feat.

The stones used are various granites (larger, whiter, some used as lintels) and dolerites (small, darker), all obtained locally.  It is thought that the chambers - or at least the earliest of them - were erected individually, and that this massive structure was then created to unite them.

The enclosed chambers cannot be visited, but this cross-section of the chambers revealed by quarrying are fascinating.  Three different neolithic building styles can be seen here.  What you cannot see are the engravings found in the passages and chambers: these include representations such as bows, axes, wave symbols and snakes.

It is thought that there are further buried neolithic structures yet to be discovered near this site.


A fascinating site with a very knowledgeable, enthusiastic guide.  (Guided tour optional, at no extra cost.  Don't know whether the guide speaks English, though.)  In any event, an unique experience and one not to be missed.