Vacances Bleues

Cultural visits on offer:

THE LAKE MUSEOSCOPE :
The Lake Museoscope overlooks the lake and the dam of Serre Ponçon, the biggest artificial lake in Europe. The museum offers an audio-visual presentation which retraces the history of the construction of the dam at Serre Ponçon. There is a lot to learn here, with five different rooms in a very scenic space :
Room showing models of the old villages

• The Durance cinema : a film about the poetry of water followed by another film explaining the reasons for the construction of the dam with observations from the previous inhabitants.
• The terraces: an animation which symbolises the filling of the Lake
• The Ubaye cinema: film about the construction of the dam
• The portholes: the legend of Amadeus, the man from the lake.

THE SUNDIALS ROUTE
The scenic sundials tourist route winds its way through the Department of the High Alps, between Buëch, Vallouise, Embrunais, Queyras and the Briançon countryside and is full of history and technology… bearing witness to the know-how of our forefathers in this land of abundant sunshine…
Sundials, combining usefulness with beauty, have adorned the facades of houses here since the 18th century… As the result of a long pictorial tradition, they display an infinite variety of different styles, with minute details and rich art… More than 400 sundials have been recorded in the Department and three quarters of these date from before the First World War with 150 being even older…Saint Véran holds the record with 20 sundials!
The sundials are real works of art, painted, sculpted, in ceramic or in trompe l’oeil. They show a great variety of imagination and technique, whether mounted on facades using paint mixed with wax or cut into stone or rock, in representation of a maxim, a proverb or a saying…
Walk through time, stroll through history… The passage of time which is constantly displayed and recorded will not pressurise you – enjoy it and get to know these warm and welcoming villages. A map of the Sundials Route is available at the tourist office in Queyras.

THE RAILWAYMEN’S ECO-MUSEUM
Veynes is the railwaymen's capital in the High Alps, ever since the construction of the railway lines at l’Etoile de Veynes 130 years ago. The first train arrived in the Department in 1875 and the opening of the engine shed and machine depot took place in 1885.
The eco-Museum is situated right in the centre of Veynes in an 18th-century private mansion next to the railway station and the car parks. There are six exhibition rooms where you can discover the history of the railwaymen of Veynes and their lives as well as:

• hundreds of objects connected to the railway
• reconstructions: a cabin, an old ticket office, a lamp store, a workshop…
• videos showing the layout of the four mountain railway lines of Etoile de Veynes
• films, models and model railway circuits
• the office of Adrien Ruelle, the chief engineer in the 19th century at Veynes