Parc la Mutta

Parc la Mutta is a stone row created in the Middle Bronze Age near Falera, in the Surselva region of the Swiss canton of Graubünden. The name comes from the Romansh word Mutta, meaning 'hilltop'. With its length of a good 400 m and 36 menhirs, it is the largest installation of its kind in Switzerland. Besides several astronomically aligned stone rows, there are also cup-marked stones.

The site lies on the southern edge of the village of Falera, above Laax, at a height of around 1250 m. Most of the stones stand on the plain of Planezzas, above the car park at the village entrance, north of the Mutta, a conspicuously wooded hill. The menhirs are erratic boulders of granite or diorite, and the largest is more than two metres high. A large part of the stones must have been brought to Planezzas from the slope above the village. Close by stands the church of St. Remigius, which is more than 1000 years old. Information boards and plans help visitors, and guided tours are held in the summer season.

In 1935 the district forester Walo Burkart, who had discovered the settlement of Crestaulta the same year, drew attention to 'six column-like blocks of rock', with distances between the stones of 19 m or a multiple of it. In 1948 J. Maurizio recognised the astronomical orientation of the main line. In 1976 Ulrich and Greti Büchi described stone rows from which individual stones had been removed.

A radiocarbon date from a piece of charcoal in the clay foundation of one menhir gave a period between 1500 and 1200 BC, the transition between the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Since it is the only such analysis, too much weight should not be given to the result, and the date of origin of the great stone row, which points towards the Taminser Calanda, remains uncertain.

In 1986 the local man Ignaz Cathomen and the Zurich geologist Ulrich Büchi re-erected some megaliths on their own initiative, without methodical archaeological documentation. In 1988, on behalf of the municipality and under Büchi's direction, excavations determined the original location of another 27 stones, and these were re-erected. In the summers of 2000 and 2001 a further nine menhirs were raised under the supervision of Jürg Rageth of the Archaeological Service of the canton. Aerial photographs taken since July 1939 record the original position of the fallen stones.

To anchor the stones, the builders first placed a firm layer of clay in the pit. The menhir was tipped into this clay bed and turned into the desired position, wedged with elongated stones, and the pit was then filled with moraine debris and humus. Most alignments on Planezzas point to important sunrise and sunset points of the year. The main line runs gently downward towards the northeast and consists of five menhirs. It points to the sunrise point over the Taminser Calanda one month before and after the summer solstice.

Parc la Mutta is a stone row (alignment) in Falera, Switzerland. Wikidata describes it as: row of stones created during the Middle Bronze Age near Falera in the Surselva region of the Swiss canton of Grisons. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the German article "Parc la Mutta", shown in the original language.