Le Puy-en-Velay: the cathedral atop the volcano

Built on ancient volcanic chimneys, Le Puy-en-Velay offers one of France's most striking views, with a statue and chapel in balance on rock spires.

The center is comfortably explored on foot, often going uphill.

The Chapel of Saint-Michel d'Aiguilhe, built in the tenth century atop a volcanic pinnacle eighty-five meters high, requires two hundred sixty-eight steps to reach.

A few steps away, the Statue of Notre-Dame de France, cast in the nineteenth century with metal from Russian cannons captured in war, dominates the city from another volcanic pipe.

Continuing, one visits the Cathedral of Le Puy, a historic starting point for the Route to Santiago de Compostela, with unusual Byzantine architectural influences for France.

Toward evening, the bobbin lace workshops, a local artisanal tradition protected for centuries, offer live demonstrations of this textile technique.

The city stands on an ancient volcanic complex eroded over millions of years, which left standing only the hardest lava chimneys, today topped by chapels and statues built by man.

Le Puy-en-Velay remains to this day one of the four historic French starting points of the Way of Santiago, walked each year by thousands of pilgrims departing from its cathedral.