Landlocked in the middle of France's "empty diagonal" — the sparsely populated band running from the northeast to the southwest — Clermont-Ferrand is arguably the country's trickiest city to reach. Ryanair has dropped its UK routes, the TGV never made it to Auvergne, and the old Intercités train from Paris Bercy still takes over three and a half hours, slower than services to Marseille, nearly 500km further away. Many visitors just take the FlixBus.
That isolation may explain why folklore runs so strong here. Surrounded by the dormant volcanoes of the Chaîne des Puys and built from sombre black lava stone, the city looks more like Scotland than central France. Its 13th-century Gothic cathedral, Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, looms over rooftops and sits atop a web of catacombs and more than 4,000 cellars — some two millennia old. The mayor once joked the city was as holey as Gruyère.
The legends have found a champion in Dr Drew Manns, a North American historian who moved here after falling for an Auvergnat in London. He has spent years combing through local archives and old newspapers, translating tales that had never before appeared in English. His Haunted Clermont Experience tour (€20 per person, €15 for under-26s, including a drink in a haunted tavern) stops at Fontaine d'Amboise, a Gothic fountain looking up at Puy-de-Dôme, where witches known as fatsillères were said to fly by broomstick to the summit — a spot that previously hosted a Roman temple to Mercury.
Auvergne's werewolf stories are especially grim. One, recovered from a 19th-century poem, tells of a nobleman who cut off a wolf's paw during a hunt, only to find it had become a human hand wearing his wife's wedding ring. She was executed. A pub nearby, the Loup Garou, honours the tale with a mounted werewolf head leering over the bar.
A newer addition to the circuit is Distillerie Génestine, which opened its vaulted cellars to the public this year — the first time any part of the city's vast underground was accessible. Founded in 1845 with a Bartholdi-designed logo (yes, the Statue of Liberty architect), it closed in the 1950s before an entrepreneur revived the original recipes in 2021. Tastings of limoncello, vermouth and pastis come with visits to a poisoner's laboratory and a school where séances were held to summon demons.
For travellers bored of France's polished big-hitters, Clermont-Ferrand offers something rare: a mid-sized city with village mentality, Gothic brooding architecture and legends you won't find translated anywhere else. The little train up Puy-de-Dôme adds a proper volcano summit to the itinerary, ruins included.
Original reporting by France Today
