Explore the Legendary Les Grands Goulets: a French balcony road

# Les Grands Goulets: France's Most Dramatic (and Closed) Mountain Road

Picture this: it's the 1840s in the French Alps, and the isolated residents of Vercors are tired of feeling cut off from the world. So what do they do? They decide to carve a road directly into the mountainside—no modern machinery, just rope ladders, dynamite, and sheer determination. Between 1844 and 1851, workers somehow managed to blast their way through the rock to create Les Grands Goulets, one of France's most legendary balcony roads.

The road itself is tiny—just 1.7 km snaking through the Drôme department between Pont-en-Royans and the Vercors plateau. What it lacks in length, it makes up for in drama. Carved into the cliff face and hanging above the Vernaison river, the route takes you through a series of jaw-dropping passages: under towering rock arches, through sections so narrow the cliffs practically touch overhead, and into a shadowy gorge where daylight barely penetrates. It genuinely feels like driving through a cave. The constant moisture and darkness mean the road stays perpetually mossy and slick—not exactly confidence-inspiring when you're perched on a narrow ledge.

Here's the thing though: you can't drive it anymore. The road closed to all traffic in 2005 after a series of rockfalls and accidents, and it's stayed that way ever since. Today, a modern tunnel runs beneath it, and the old road functions solely as an emergency exit. No cars, no cyclists, no hikers—nothing. Despite decades of speculation about reopening it for adventurous travelers, authorities have made it clear: Les Grands Goulets is permanently off-limits, a ghost road that once took travelers on a white-knuckle 156-year journey through the mountains.