France’s Legendary Durandal Sword Mysteriously Disappears After 1,300 Years

After being buried in stone in the village of Rocamadour for more than 1,300 years, France’s fabled blade, the Durandal, has somehow vanished. The Telegraph UK reports that the French authorities are looking at the theft of this “magical” blade.

Monday’s theft of a major tourist site in Rocamadour, the Durandal Famously connected with the knight Roland, a major character in French literature, who was claimed to have a ‘indestructible sword,’ was the ancient weapon. Medieval tales hold that Roland received this “magical” sword from an angel. Legend has it that Roland permanently sank the blade into the rock to stop it from landing in enemy hands. This deed led to the conviction that the sword could strike one blow through stone.

Celebrated in the 11th-century epic poem Song of Roland, the first significant work of French literature still in existence, these magical attributes reflect

Distressed residents, however, claim that the sword—embased 100 feet above the ground—has been taken. We are going to miss Durandal. For millennia, Rocamadour has been a part of the community; local mayor Dominique Lenfant stated La Dépêche, a French newspaper, there is no guide who does not point it out during visits.

Lenfant said, “Rocamadour believes it’s been robbed of a part of herself. The fate of our community and this sword is interwoven even if it is a myth.

How someone managed to climb 100 feet up a cliff and remove the sword from the stone puzzles police.

The Durandal was regarded as so precious that a town councillor and a security guard accompanied it to Paris when it was on show at the Cluny Museum in 2011.