The suspended gallery
Hundreds of metres fixed to the rock wall above the river.
Tiia Monto — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France — CC BY 2.0 · Tiia Monto — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Martin Thurnherr — CC BY-SA 4.0
**Seasonally only**, usually from around mid-March to mid-October, closed all winter. It can also shut temporarily after **heavy rain** raises the river, for safety. Check the official site in the week of your visit — arriving at a closed gate after driving ten kilometres is the thing that most often spoils this particular outing. Spring, after snowmelt, gives the strongest flow and the best spectacle.
Children who walk well usually love it — the gallery is railed and secure and the scene is exciting. But **pushchairs are effectively impossible** given the steps and the width, so carry a small child or use a back carrier. For anyone afraid of heights it is a personal question: the walkway is narrow and hung over a twenty-five-metre drop, and although it is fully railed and safe, the sense of height is unmistakable and there is no way off it in the middle. The whole visit is about 45 minutes.
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A narrow cleft cut by the river **Fier** through limestone over thousands of years, until it became a passage no more than a few metres wide at its tightest, between walls rising tens of metres. At the bottom the water runs dark green and foaming; above, a thin strip of sky. What makes it a visit rather than merely a view is the **suspended walkway**: a narrow timber gallery bolted with iron into the rock wall itself, running hundreds of metres into the gorge about twenty-five metres above the water. Walking it you feel the wall at your shoulder and the void beneath your feet, with the sound of the river filling everything. This is not a modern installation: the walkway opened to visitors in **1869**, meaning people have been walking here for more than a century and a half — one of the oldest natural sites in France equipped for visiting. It lies near the village of Lovagny, about ten kilometres west of Annecy, immediately beside **Château de Montrottier** — and the two are naturally visited together in a single half-day.
Hundreds of metres fixed to the rock wall above the river.
High walls, a thin strip of sky and foaming green water.
Practically adjacent — the two make one half-day.
Gorges du Fier, 74330 Lovagny