In Carnac, north of the town, rows of standing stones over 4 kilometres in 70 hectares of heath

History

The Carnac alignments number some 3,000 standing stones, set out in several groups over 4 km: Le Ménec, Kermario and Kerlescan are the main ones. Rescue excavations around Carnac have given dates mostly between 4800 and 3500 BC. Nobody knows whether the rows went up in a few years or over several centuries.

The site follows the lie of the land. Stone enclosures stand on the high points, to the west, with the tallest stones, and the menhirs get smaller as the ground falls. Some rows were laid over older monuments. In the Middle Ages a first chapel was built on the Saint-Michel tumulus; in modern times, grazing walls cut the alignments into small fields.

Research picked up in the second half of the nineteenth century. Most of the stones had fallen by then, and many were set upright again from the 1880s and 1890s. The Ménec, Kermario and Kerlescan alignments were listed as historic monuments in 1889, and the State bought most of the land. In the 1920s and 1930s the archaeologist Zacharie Le Rouzic marked the re-erected stones with a small reddish dab of mortar.

Until the early 1990s the site was entirely open, and visitors' feet stripped the ground bare. The Centre des monuments nationaux then put up fences, organised guided visits and handed the upkeep of the heath to a flock of Landes de Bretagne sheep, now about a hundred animals. The alignments cover nearly 70 ha of heath, grassland and pine wood.

On 12 July 2025 the World Heritage Committee inscribed the "Megaliths of Carnac and of the shores of Morbihan" on the World Heritage List. The property groups more than 550 monuments in 27 communes, between the Étel estuary and the Rhuys peninsula; Carnac alone has 179.

At the reference point for the alignments, the cadastre shows plot BM 135, of 29,218 m². The local development plan zones it Nm1p, the natural sector that forms the core of the protection of the megalithic site. It also lies within Carnac’s protected heritage area and the protected surroundings of Le Ménec, Kermario, Le Manio and Kerlescan.

Updated 28 October 2026