Welcome to annot, the country of the sandstones

The imposing aspect of sandstone cliffs dominating the village, since always, aroused a great interest.

The generic Sandstone d' name; Annot, was given to the collection of this formation by Fatty the Scipion geologist in 1840.

It qualifies a sedimentary rock made up of grains of quartz, feldpath and remains of rocks, cemented by calcite. The sandy benches can reach 250 m thickness.

The sandstones of Annot were formed there is approximately 40 million years by underwater avalanches of sand and vase, their age is difficult to evaluate in a precise way because of the little of fossils that they contain. With the formation of the Alps, the together was fractured and deformed what gives him this picturesque aspect.

Conscious of the interest of the site, the municipal council deliberates, since 1920, for its classification. Today, a marked out path allows to discover this exceptional natural heritage but also the great diversity of the flora which is associated for it. Certain gigantic isolated blocks make the joy of the climbing ones which have nearly 150 ways equipped and one of the rare occasions to climb on sandstone.

The slope located at the north-eastern north of the village is a sandy solid mass with, by places some outcrops marly; a scarcity in the Haute Provence Alps where limestone very largely dominates.

It allowed the development of an endemic flora. You can find there the violet and the centaury of Jordan, the winged broom, as well as many orchises such as the orchis monkey or the orchis of Provence without forgetting this majestic tree that is the chestnut.

With the exception of large a hêtraie, pouring it located at the south-western south, was formerly cleared. It is today mainly covered by a forest of pines and larches replanted at the end of the 19th century. In open and well exposed spaces, you meet the wild peony there and read turban.

• The old center

For more than twenty years, Annot has belonged to the villages of the Alpes de haute Provence classified " Villages and Cities of character".

While developing the tourist reception, it knew to preserve the quality of its architectural heritage.

In 1946, most of the old frame is classified or registered in the inventory of the historic buildings.

Built on a hillock of sandstone and marnes, which levels sometimes with the turning of a street, the habitat is tight in the interior of the ramparts. The latter, often masked by the houses date, for the essence, the end of the 14th century.

A house with the engraved lintel, of 1484, another of 1533, a town hall built under Louis XIV, Annot preserved a particularly rich old heart. To discover the inheritance of the village, the tourist office proposes a published guide to you; attention of the children, the guided visits, the books…

• The landscape inheritance

The old center is however a component of its richness, Annot is spread with the liking of the relief that the men's generations worked in the course of the centuries. It is before a whole harmonious landscape, where cut stone of the frame press on the rough stone carved by time and returns to the sandstone crown dominating the village.

The ravines and rivers make echo with the channels, fountains and laundrettes and ochres and reds of the tiles channel recall the blazing colors of the leafy trees to l' autumn.

Shelters under rocks

A original hiking in the discover of the first annotains and their shelters under rocks. In the shadow of the underwoods in the chaos of the sandstones of Annot, you will discover the first rustic habitats and semi-troglodytes of our ancestors.

You will plunge yourselves between 1000 and 2000 years in the past in the middle of the legend of the " Room of Roi".

2:00 of strolls, 100m of uneven, 1km of walk