Verdon

The Verdon Regional Nature Park was created in 1997 in Haute-Provence, between the departments of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Var, and protects some 1,880 km² of limestone plateaux, valleys and mountain villages.

Its central feature is the Verdon Gorge, a canyon some twenty-five kilometres long cut by the river into the limestone, with walls more than seven hundred metres high and a width that narrows to little more than six metres in places. It is regarded as the deepest canyon in Europe, and it was not fully explored until 1905, by the speleologist Édouard-Alfred Martel. The river's water, an intense turquoise from the carbonates in suspension, is its most recognisable visual feature.

The canyon opens into Lake Sainte-Croix, a reservoir created in 1974 that flooded the village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon, later rebuilt at a higher level. The walls of the gorge are a classic European climbing destination and hold an important cliff-nesting bird community, with griffon vulture and a reintroduction programme for bearded vulture and cinereous vulture running since the late 1990s. The surrounding plateaux preserve a farming landscape of lavender and holm oak woods.