Rocher Bayard, Dinant

The Rocher Bayard is a rock needle about 40 metres high on the right bank of the Meuse between Dinant and Anseremme. The road runs between the slender column of rock and the rest of the cliff – a sight that has made it one of the best-known photo motifs in the Meuse valley.

It takes its name from a medieval legend: Bayard was the horse of the four sons of Duke Aymon – Renaud, Richard, Alard and Guichard. After a quarrel at the court of Charlemagne in which a nephew of the emperor died, the brothers fled through the Ardennes on the horse’s back. Cornered high above the Meuse, Bayard struck the rock with his hoof and leapt across the river – and the rock split in two. A hoofprint is said to be visible to this day.

In reality the gap is man-made: after taking Dinant, soldiers of Louis XIV separated the rock from the cliff to build an easy road along the Meuse. The passage was later widened for motor traffic. Victor Hugo described the rock in 1838 on his journey to the Rhine, and Gustave Courbet painted it around 1856; the painting now hangs in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The rock was first climbed in the 1930s; since the 1960s climbing has been forbidden because of the nearby road.