La Roche à Bayard, Dinant

In May 1675 French troops took Dinant on the Meuse, and Louis XIV entered the town on the 23rd. To move his army and its guns along the riverbank, engineers packed powder into the foot of this limestone needle, the Rocher Bayard, and blew a passage through it. The older explanation for the gap was more entertaining. Medieval legend gave it to Bayard, the magic horse of the four sons of Aymon, who struck the rock as he leapt clear of Charlemagne's men. Courbet painted the spire in the 1850s. He had grown up at Ornans, under the limestone cliffs of the Loue valley, and came back to rock walls and grottoes all his life. The needle stands about 40 metres, and the gap at its base, which now carries the road south out of Dinant, is the part that people made.