Discovering the Menhirs of Europe

Often, weekends are very busy with lunch at grandmothers, a visit to grandfather, coffee at your parents, and all the housework you don’t get round to doing on weekdays. When Monday comes around, you realise that you haven’t taken a minute to recharge your batteries and it’s already time to go back to work. So we said stop! We took advantage of a long weekend (that’s right, the 15th of August) to enjoy a walk and immerse ourselves in our beautiful natural environment. Especially since the weather was great (you see we’re not joking when we say it’s sunny in Moselle).

Elodie

An expert on the region takes you and her family on a cross-border outing to discover some unique works of art.

A CROSS-BORDER
PATH

Head for Launstroff, on the border between France and Germany, on the trail of the Menhirs of Europe. Of course, like us, you imagine the little man who fell into the Druid’s cauldron of magic potion when he was young, with his menhirs on his back! Not at all! No Brittany, no Celtic legends and no red-headed man with a moustache, instead a contemporary open-air museum!

The aim of this 30-year-old path is to offer hikers a modern and surprising approach to the cross-border landscape based on the theme of peace. It’s a success because it’s a sight to behold!

Go an a hike6MB

Menhirs de l'Europe - Launstroff - Randonnée Grand-Est

AN OPEN-AIR

MUSEUM

While in France, you can follow the menhirs one by one, a little like Tom Thumb following the pebbles he has scattered. All are unique and all have a different natural environment; sometimes surrounded by cows, sometimes in a freshly mown field, or in the middle of a lawn laid out for a picnic.

Once you reach the French-German border (that’s right, you walk along the border), old 19th century milestones sit alongside these huge and elegantly sculpted blocks of rock. Imagine about thirty works of art along an 8-kilometre long route. Menhirs in granite, Vosges sandstone or Jaumont stone, typical of the region, created by artists from all over Europe and even further afield.

COMBINE

NATURE AND NEW DISCOVERIES

When you come across the work of a Czechoslovakian artist from the late 1980s (sorry, I don’t remember his name) whose information board still indicates “CSFR”, you recall all those Eastern European countries and their turbulent past and suddenly feel a part of the history of these blocks and their artists. What did they want to say? What are they telling us? Why these shapes?

It is impossible to describe their exact shape, either twisted or geometrical, each one has its own words.

READY TO COUNT THE MENHIRS?

If I haven’t convinced you yet, imagine spending two hours surrounded by nature (don’t do as we did, don’t take a picture on a bale of straw among the corn or in a wheat field and try and be more grown-up) in complete peace and quiet where only the buzzing of insects will remind you that you are not alone.

Discover