A town born of coal
Decazeville owes its name and its founding to the Duke Élie Decazes, who in 1826 launched the industrial working of coal and ironworks with the engineer François-Gracchus Cabrol. Coal had been mined in the area since the 16th century, but it was this 19th-century drive that turned the basin into a fully industrial area. Underground mining continued until 1966, while open-cast working went on until 2001: more than ten million tonnes of coal were extracted in total.
La Découverte: a pit turned natural site
The site known as "la Découverte" is the largest open-cast mine ever worked in France. You can still see the headframe, a 22-metre metal structure that lowered miners as deep as 150 metres underground: it is the only one of its kind left in Aveyron. After closure in 2001, the site underwent a major rehabilitation between 2001 and 2007, with nearly 6 million cubic metres of earth moved and an 8-hectare lake created at the bottom of the former pit. Today, paths follow the old mining tracks up to a high viewpoint overlooking La Découverte and Decazeville, or to the statue of the Virgin for a panorama over the Lot valley and the Aveyron hills.
Practical information
Access to the paths, the lake circuit and the viewpoints is free all year round. A guided tour is offered to individual visitors from April to October (€5 per adult, €3 for children aged 8 to 12), and all year round for groups by appointment, in two parts: the museum of industrial and mining heritage, then the Découverte site and its headframe. Allow about 25 minutes by car from the cottage, for 24 km. The Cransac spa, with its own mining history, is only about ten minutes' drive away: the two visits combine well on the same day.