On the rocky coast at Rothéneuf, about 4km northeast of Saint-Malo, a 19th-century priest named Adolphe-Julien Fouré spent twenty-five years carving an extraordinary gallery of figures directly into the granite cliffs. Abbé Fouré began the work after a stroke left him deaf, around 1870, and continued until his death in 1910, creating roughly three hundred faces, bodies, and creatures emerging from the rock.
The carvings depict a cast of characters from Breton legend and local history, including pirates, saints, and monsters. They have been weathered by more than a century of Atlantic storms, and are now somewhat eroded compared to their original sharpness — but this gives them an authenticity that a more polished monument would lack. The site is privately owned and charges a small entry fee. It is reachable by bus from Saint-Malo or on foot if you are energetic.