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Origin and history

The Menhir de Bourg-Jardin, located in Avrillé in Vendée, is an emblematic vestige of Neolithic. Also nicknamed the King or Menhir of the Camp of Caesar, it originally belonged to a set of four menhirs arranged in triangle. Three of them were destroyed in the 19th century, especially in 1823 when a bourgeois house was built. Only this monolithic block of granite remains today, weighing about 85 tons and culminating at 8.70 m, including 7 m above ground. Its traces of extraction remain visible, testifying to the old techniques of size.

Ranked as a historic monument in 1889, this menhir gave rise to various interpretations. In 1780, a local scholar claimed that he served as a landmark for Caesar's fleet, a persistent legend. An anecdote also reports that Georges Clemenceau, visiting the owners of the land (the Gillaizeau family), would have asked to know his depth of burial. A trench dug in the night revealed 1.70 m underground. These stories illustrate the cultural and historical attachment to this monument.

The site was initially linked to an inn named Les Trois Pillars, now replaced by the town hall of Avrillé. The menhir, described in 1762 by Anne-Claude-Philippe de Caylus, was accompanied by three other erect stones, the dimensions of which were specified in his writings. Their gradual disappearance reflects the transformations of the landscape and the architectural priorities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today, it remains a major symbol of the megalithic heritage of the Vendee.

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