Caverne des Brigands

Claude-François Denecourt understood that nineteenth-century walkers came to the forest for stories as much as for fresh air. He did not stop at marking trails: he gave the forest a narrative geography, naming rocks, inventing legends, staging natural theatres. The Caverne des Brigands, which he had dug and populated with an imaginary band of thieves, is his masterpiece in that vein: an entirely manufactured place that produces an entirely real emotion. In 1844 he launched the legend of a "Robbers' Cave" said to have sheltered, under Louis XV, the gang of one Thissier. There never were any brigands: the man who later ran the cave's refreshment stall admitted he had dug it out under the rock himself, on Denecourt's instructions. You have to stoop slightly to pass through, and nearly two centuries later it still works its effect, on children and adults alike.