The mountain of Hortus (512 m) is located on the commune of Valflaunès (Herault), to approximately 20 km in the north of Montpellier, very close to the Pic Saint-Wolf to which it faces. It is consisted the fracture of the plate of Pompignan.

Its impressive and very esthetic Calcareous white, high cliff of of more than one hundred meters and broad of more than one kilometer, is visible since all the area of Montpellier. It lodges some couples of Rapaces.

With its neighbor the Peak Saint-Wolf, Hortus constitutes one of the principal destinations of trott montpelliérain.

Geology

Calcareous cliff of Cretaceous released by diaclase and collapse of the plate of Pompignan (patus) between Hortus and the peak Saint-Wolf.

The cave of Hortus: a shelter néandertalien

The cave of Hortus was used as refuge to the men of Néandertal between 60.000 and 30.000 years. The excavation of its porch, carried out on a broad pit delivered a stratigraphy of several meters. This excavation, carried out by a multi-field team gave information on the climate, fauna and the flora contemporaries of the men who gave up on the site an abundant industry moustérienne (points, blades, scrapers…) as well as bones of their similar (a hundred parts, of which many Jawbone S and Mandible S).

After this first occupation, stratigraphy does not deliver a material of the paleolithic superior. Nevertheless, one finds the traces of a regular occupation of the Neolithic (chaséen and ferrièren) until the Chalcolithique and to the final Bronze Age.

A jewel of the cliff

The verticality of the limestone of Hortus in made a high place of the Languedocien Escalade . An about sixty splendid ways traverse this beautiful face which offers a more pleasant and more difficult cliff (sixth with eighth degrees) that the northern face of the Peak Saint-Wolf very close.

Vine growing

Between Hortus and the Peak Saint-Wolf, the vineyards extend which deliver the most famous vintages " Peak Saint-Loup" (AOC Slopes of Languedoc).

External bonds

• prehistoric Inheritance and speleology in the cave of Hortus

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