50 Fun Facts About Pyrenees

The Pyrenees form the border between which two countries?

The microstate of Andorra sits sandwiched between them in the eastern part of the range.

Roughly how long are the Pyrenees, from their western junction to the Mediterranean?

They end at Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean coast.

What is the highest peak in the Pyrenees?

It reaches 3,404 metres in the Maladeta ridge in Huesca, Spain.

How high is Aneto, the range's highest summit?

Posets (3,375 m) and Monte Perdido (3,355 m) come next.

Which microstate lies within the range?

Its capital Andorra la Vella is the largest town inside the range.

In Greek myth, the mountains are named for Pyrene, a princess violated by which hero?

Silius Italicus says he later found her remains and demanded the mountains echo her name forever.

Other ancient writers derived the name Pyrenees from the Greek word for what?

Diodorus Siculus told of herdsmen whose fire burned the whole range.

Which French département is also known as Northern Catalonia?

It is the easternmost of the six French Pyrenean départements.

Physiographically, the Pyrenees are a province of which larger mountain division?

They are divided into Atlantic, Central and Eastern sections.

Compared with the Alps, the Pyrenees are what?

Their sediments were first laid down in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic; the uplift culminated in the Eocene.

The Pyrenees rose when which body of water 'fanned out', pushing Spain against France?

This happened between 100 and 150 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous.

What rock gives the eastern Pyrenees their massive, unworn character?

In the west the granite peaks are flanked by limestone layers.

What is the local name for the mountain torrents that form the Pyrenees' waterfalls?

Their waterfalls are surpassed in Europe only by Scandinavia's.

What is the highest waterfall in the Pyrenees?

It drops 462 metres at the head of the Gave de Pau, inside the famous cirque of the same name.

What is a 'cirque' in Pyrenean landscape terms?

Gavarnie, Troumouse and Estaubé are the most famous examples.

What is the highest road pass in the Pyrenees, on the road up to the microstate?

At 2,408 m it is one of the highest points on the European road network.

Which crossing in Navarre, at 1,057 m, is an important point on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route?

At 1,057 m it is one of the lower crossings.

According to legend, which of Charlemagne's paladins cut the famous gap in the main ridge, La Brèche, with his sword?

La Brèche de Roland is said to have been struck by his sword Durendal.

The open pit at Trimoun near Luzenac in Ariège is one of Europe's greatest sources of what?

Roman-era marble quarries in the range supplied the Louvre, Versailles and Constantinople.

Why do the western Pyrenees receive far more precipitation than the eastern?

By the time the air reaches the east it has dropped its moisture, so the eastern range has no glaciers.

Roughly where does the annual snow-line lie in the Pyrenees?

Seasonal snow is seen at least half the time above 1,600 m from December to April.

Which small aquatic mammal is found only in streams on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees?

Its only relative, the Russian desman, lives in the Volga basin.

The Pyrenean ibex, an endemic subspecies, became extinct in which year?

The western Spanish ibex was later introduced and numbered over 400 by 2020.

From which country were three brown bears brought in 1996 to revive the Pyrenean population?

About 15 now live in the central region around Fos.

The genus most abundantly represented in the range's flora, with several endemic species, is which?

The monotypic genus Xatardia grows only on one high pass between the Val d'Eynes and Catalonia.

Which Spanish national park in the Pyrenees is named after a mountain called 'Lost Mountain'?

Together with France's Pyrénées National Park it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

The 1997 UNESCO listing cited the landforms and testimony to which traditional agricultural system?

Whole families once moved uphill with their livestock in May or June and back down in autumn.

Which minority language, in its Aranese dialect, is spoken in the Aran Valley?

Spanish, French, Catalan, Aragonese and Basque are the other main languages of the range.

The Pic du Midi Observatory sits at what altitude?

Its telescope helped discredit the Martian canal theory in 1909 and photographed the Moon for Apollo.

A NASA-funded telescope at Pic du Midi was installed in 1963 to photograph what?

Studies there in 1965 also helped JPL predict that Mars and Venus had no life.

The world's largest solar furnace stands at Odeillo in the Pyrenees. What temperatures can it reach within seconds?

Its 63 heliostats exploit more than 2,500 hours of direct sunshine a year.

Which is the largest urban area close to the Pyrenees?

Its metropolitan area has more than 1.3 million people; Pamplona is the closest big city on the Spanish side.

Which pilgrimage town in the Hautes-Pyrénées is among the main towns inside the range?

Jaca and La Seu d'Urgell are the main Spanish towns and Andorra la Vella the largest overall.

The GR 10, GR 11 and HRP are what?

GR 10 runs the northern slopes, GR 11 the southern, and the HRP follows the high ridges.

Pirena is a competition held in the Pyrenees in what sport?

The range also hosts crucial stages of the Tour de France and Vuelta a España.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees, fixing the Franco-Spanish border, was signed in which year?

It ended the Franco-Spanish War that had begun in 1635.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees was negotiated on which condominium in the Bidasoa River?

It has remained a French-Spanish condominium ever since.

Because the treaty said only 'villages' north of the mountains would go to France, which town became a Spanish exclave inside France?

It had once been the capital of Cerdanya.

Which two monarchs signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees?

Their chief ministers, Cardinal Mazarin and Luis de Haro, negotiated it.

Which famous Tour de France climb, at 2,115 m, is the second-highest paved pass in the French Pyrenees?

Only the Col de Portet is higher on the French side; its name means 'distance mountain' in Gascon.

The 778 ambush of Charlemagne's rearguard in the mountains, immortalised in a medieval epic, was fought at which pass?

Basques ambushed Charlemagne's rearguard as it retreated from Spain.

Who ambushed Charlemagne's rearguard in the mountains in 778?

They were avenging his destruction of the walls of Pamplona.

The 778 ambush of Charlemagne's rearguard is recounted in which 11th-century work, the oldest surviving major work of French literature?

Ariosto's Orlando Furioso later retold the story in Italian.

The livestock-guarding dog breed known in the US as the Great Pyrenees is called what in France?

The name comes from pâtre, meaning shepherd; Louis XIV declared it the Royal Dog of France.

Which French king designated the Pyrenean Mountain Dog the Royal Dog of France?

Madame de Maintenon and the Dauphin brought one to court, where it became fashionable.

What is the average winter temperature given for the Pyrenees?

Glaciers survive only on the northern slopes of the central range.

The Pyrenees are noted for the near absence of what feature common in the Alps?

They are also short of low, usable passes, so main roads run at the two ends near sea level.

Which mountain range do the Pyrenees join at their western end?

From there they run east to Cap de Creus.

Why do the eastern Pyrenees lack glaciers?

The glaciers that survive cling to the northern slopes of the central range, lying along the chain rather than descending into valleys as in the Alps.

Which mountain crossing, at 1,632 m, carried old Roman roads and is also called the Port de Canfranc?

Because low passes are scarce, tunnels were later bored beneath Somport, Envalira and Puymorens.