Chaîne des Puys - Limagne fault tectonic arena
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How it came to be
The Chaîne des Puys in central France is a volcanic field about 40 kilometres long from north to south. It has 48 cinder cones, eight lava domes and 15 maars and explosion craters, and its highest point, the Puy de Dôme, rises to 1,465 metres. The chain sits on the Limagne fault, part of the European rift system that formed about 35 million years ago as the Alps rose.
The volcanoes began to form about 95,000 years ago, and activity stopped about 10,000 years ago. The last eruption is usually dated to 4040 BC. Before 1750, when the chain was recognised as volcanic, the hills were rumoured to be heaps of mining waste or Roman furnaces.
In 2018 the long Limagne fault, the line of Chaîne des Puys volcanoes and the inverted relief of the Montagne de la Serre were inscribed together on the World Heritage List, as a place where the splitting of a continent can be seen at the surface.
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