On a wet june day, we visited the medieval walled city of Avignon on the banks of the Rhone, and one of the few French cities to have preserved its ramparts. We parked outside the walls and spent the day exploring the thriving town of 100,000.
On a wet june day, we visited the medieval walled city of Avignon on the banks of the Rhone, and one of the few French cities to have preserved its ramparts. We parked outside the walls and spent the day exploring the thriving town of 100,000.
Below: Le Palais des Papes, begun in about 1250, when Avignon replaced the Vatican as the seat of Five Catholic Popes (and and a couple of anti-popes). During the French revolution it was seized by revolutionary forces and was the scene of massacres of counter-revolutionaries. We spent a couple hours on a tour of it but it remains empty of furnishings, so you have to imagine how it was.
Below: the other famous landmark, Le Pont d’Avignon, memorialized by the children’s song:
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse, l’on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond
L’on y danse, l’on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there, we all dance there
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there in a ring
We all dance there, we all dance there
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there in a ring
Built in 1171 over the Rhone it suffered frequent collapses during floods—stone bridges tend to do that— and in 1668 half was swept away by a catastrophic flood and abandoned. After we went out on the bridge we walked up to a beautiful park overlooking the city and the bridge.View from the hilltop park (in the rain). It’s the wide angle lens that make the building on the left lean outward.
Lavander (of course)
The charming village of Lourmarin, where we made our home for 5 nights, also home to Albert Camus, whose writings were a big influence on me and others in my college days in the early sixties.
Our friends’ house, near a pass in the Luberon range (background)
