In Provence, a clue refers to a narrow passage, carved by a torrent perpendicular to a mountain range, seemingly impassable. The Clue de Sisteron is located between the rock of La Baume and that of the citadel.
Description
A geological curiosity, the Clue de Sisteron is the patient work of the Durance. It has always been one of the rare crossing points between the Alps and Provence.
In Provence, the term clue refers to a narrow passage, dug by a torrent perpendicular to a mountain range. The Sisteron clue lies between two limestone geological formations of the same nature, formerly continuous: the Rocher de la Baume and the Rocher de la Citadelle. These rocks were born from a single, significant deposit of sediments at the bottom of the sea (during the Secondary Era), raised and folded during the uplift of the Alps. Now upright, the hardest strata have resisted the erosion of the Durance, leaving it with only one and leaving a narrow passage that has been used, since Antiquity, by all communication routes. An obligatory passage to connect the Alps to Provence, it was undoubtedly in Sisteron that the first stone bridge over the Durance was built in the 13th century.
The Clue de Sisteron is also a climatic gateway – the limit of the olive grove – and a historical gateway between Provence and Dauphiné.
Rates / opening
Prices
Free access.
Opening
Open all year round.