Chaine des Puys
Chain Of Some Eighty Dormant Volcanoes West Of Clermont Ferrand, With The Puy De DôMe; The ChaîNe Des Puys Limagne Fault Tectonic Arena, UNESCO World Heritage Site Inscribed 2018 · Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes
The Chaîne des Puys is a line of some eighty dormant volcanoes running north to south for roughly 30 to 40 kilometres just west of Clermont-Ferrand, in the Massif Central. Most are rounded cinder cones and domes, now grassed or wooded, with craters clear enough to make the landscape easy to read. The highest and best known is the Puy de Dôme, at roughly 1,465 metres, with the ruins of a Roman Temple of Mercury on the summit and wide views over the chain and the Limagne plain. No private cars go to the top: visitors ride the Panoramique des Dômes rack train or climb the steep Chemin des Muletiers footpath. Together with the Limagne fault, the chain was inscribed by UNESCO in 2018 as a tectonic arena showing how a continent begins to split. Around it are the Puy Pariou crater walk, the Lemptégy volcano opened up by quarrying and the Vulcania theme park. The summit is often in fog and strong wind, even in summer, and Clermont-Ferrand, with its black lava-stone cathedral, is the natural base.
Puy de Dôme and the Chaîne des Puys, west of Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme, Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France
The volcanoes themselves are open country with no gates and can be walked at any time of year, though most visitors come between spring and autumn. The Panoramique des Dômes rack train to the Puy de Dôme runs every day for most of the year, with frequent departures in summer and a reduced timetable in winter, and it usually closes for a few weeks of maintenance, often in late autumn or early in the year; confirm the dates. The summit road is closed to private cars all year, so the train or your own legs are the only way up. Summit restaurants, the small exhibition space and the Temple of Mercury area follow the train's pattern, with shorter hours in the cold months. Vulcania is seasonal, generally open from spring to early November and closed in deep winter, with some weekdays closed in the shoulder months, and it is busiest in French school holidays; book tickets online in summer. Lemptégy is also seasonal with guided visits at set times. In winter, snow and ice can close footpaths and the train can stop in high wind, so check the day's conditions before driving out.