# Avignon and the Palace of the Popes — The South of France
> A walled city on the Rhône that was the seat of the popes, a broken bridge in a children’s song, and France’s great theatre festival each July. Avignon, in the Vaucluse.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/avignon-palais-des-papes/*

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By **The Editors** — _Avignon, Vaucluse_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

For most of the fourteenth century the popes lived not in Rome but in **Avignon**, and they built to prove it — the **Palais des Papes**, the largest Gothic palace in the world, still fills the rock above the Rhône like a fortress that happens to be a court. The whole city behind its ramparts grew up to serve it.

## I. The palace and the rock

The **Palais** is two palaces in one — the austere old wing and the grand new one — vast halls, chapels and the popes’ private chambers with their painted hunting scenes. Climb beyond it to the **Rocher des Doms**, the garden on the height, for the river, the bridge and the hills of the Alpilles laid out below.

“They built a fortress and called it a court, and ruled the Church from the Rhône.”

From the notebook

![A great Gothic hall of pale stone](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1566720537031-8b3e498d2881?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

Inside the Palais des Papes — halls built to the scale of a papacy.

## II. The bridge in the song

Below the walls, the **Pont Saint-Bénézet** — the _pont d’Avignon_ of the children’s round — reaches half-way across the Rhône and stops, its arches carried off by the floods centuries ago. Four spans remain, with a tiny chapel on one, and the song outlives the bridge: everyone dances on it, no one ever quite did.

![A broken medieval bridge reaching into a wide river](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1578330466360-bd27f92d2fb1?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The Pont Saint-Bénézet — four arches into the Rhône, and then the water.

## III. The festival and the gateway

Every July the **Festival d’Avignon** turns the city into the capital of French theatre, the courtyard of the palace its greatest stage. The rest of the year Avignon is the gateway to the south — TGV from Paris, then the Luberon, the Alpilles and the vineyards of **Châteauneuf-du-Pape** all within half an hour.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _visit_

Getting there

Avignon TGV is under 3 h from Paris; a shuttle runs to the walled centre in minutes.

When to go

Spring and autumn for the city; July for the festival, when every room is booked.

Where to stay

**La Mirande**, in the shadow of the palace, a townhouse kept like a private museum.

Read next

[A weekend in the Luberon, village by village](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/luberon-weekend/)

E

About the Author · L’auteur

#### Élise Marchand

Travel Editor — based in Marseille

Élise has been driving the back roads of the Midi for the journal since its first issue. She pays for her own rooms and her own lunches — and only writes about the places she would return to.

[More by Élise Marchand — voir ses articles](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/journal/)

Continue reading · À lire ensuite

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