The Vaucluse is the department of inland Provence and Mont Ventoux, ‘the giant of Provence’, which Petrarch was the first to climb in 1336, in an ascent that symbolically marked the beginning of the Renaissance. This landscape of agricultural plains, limestone gorges and villages perched on rocky outcrops — the dry-stone “bories”, the Dentelles de Montmirail, the ochres of Roussillon — is one of the most photographed regions in France.
Avignon, the City of the Popes which hosted the papacy from 1309 to 1377 and whose Palais des Papes is the largest Gothic building in the world, is the department’s must-see monument. Its theatre festival, founded by Jean Vilar in 1947, has become the world’s leading performing arts festival. The Château des Baux-de-Provence, Gordes with its Renaissance castle overlooking the village, Ansouis with its medieval castle inhabited by the same family since the 17th century, Lourmarin where Albert Camus is buried…
Sénanque Abbey, nestled in a lavender-filled valley at the foot of the village of Gordes, and the Vaucluse spring, whose source is one of the most powerful in Europe, complete a picture of the ideal Provence that has inspired so many painters, writers and travellers since the Renaissance.