Auvergne

The region’s natural resources have generated top-quality ingredients for the local cuisine.

Home to 1.3 million Auvergnats who have earned a reputation as hard workers, the region covers 10,155 square miles--a territory slightly smaller than that Maryland and Delaware combined--giving it a population density half that of the French average. Because of its geological make-up, accessibility was once Auvergne’s greatest problem.

Human settlements existed in the early stages of the Stone Age, becoming more numerous in the Bronze Age with the arrival of the Celts and the Arvenes. Their chief, Vercingétorix, fought the invading Romans on the plateau of Gergovie, only to be defeated later in Alésia in 52 BC. During the Middle Ages, the region was divided among feuding vassals. In 950, Le Puy-en-Velay was the starting point for one of the four pilgrimage routes to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.