# Gordes and the Abbey of Sénanque — The South of France
> A village stacked in pale stone above the Luberon, and a Cistercian abbey kept by monks in a fold of the hills, its lavender turning the valley blue. Gordes, in the Vaucluse.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/gordes-senanque/*

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By **The Editors** — _Gordes, Vaucluse_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

Gordes climbs a rock face on the northern edge of the Luberon, its houses piled in dry pale stone so that the whole village seems carved from the cliff rather than built on it. From the road below it is one of the great sights of Provence — a town that holds to its hill like a single grey-gold mass, the **château** at the crown.

## I. The village that grew from the rock

Walk up through the **calades**, the steep cobbled ramps, past vaulted passages and the Renaissance **château** on the summit. Gordes is one of the **Plus Beaux Villages de France**, and the pleasure is in the climb — the light off the limestone, the valley opening behind you at every turn. Below the village, the **Village des Bories** gathers a hamlet of dry-stone huts, built without mortar, that kept shepherds and their tools for centuries.

“The town does not sit on the hill — it is the hill, dressed in windows.”

From the notebook

![Stone lanes climbing through a Provençal hill village](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1445510491599-c391e8046a68?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

A calade in Gordes — every ramp a stair, every wall the same pale stone.

## II. Sénanque, the abbey in the fold

A few kilometres north, the road drops into a narrow valley and the **Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque** appears below — a Cistercian abbey founded in 1148, still home to a community of monks. In front of its plain Romanesque church the **lavender** is planted in long rows that flower in late June and July, the most photographed image in Provence and, in the early morning before the coaches, still one of the most beautiful.

![A Romanesque abbey with rows of lavender before it](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1516314477696-a6f8b681f331?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

Sénanque in flower — the lavender deliberate, the architecture austere.

## III. The plateau and the stone country around it

Gordes sits at the edge of high open country — the **plateau de Vaucluse**, the perched villages of **Roussillon** and **Joucas**, the Sunday market town of **Apt**. It is the obvious base for the northern Luberon: close enough to Sénanque for the dawn light, high enough to watch the whole valley change colour as the day turns.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _climb_

Getting there

Avignon TGV, then about 45 min by car; the road up to Gordes is worth taking slowly for the view.

When to go

Late June and July for the lavender at Sénanque; spring and autumn for the village without the crowds.

Where to stay

**La Bastide de Gordes**, cut into the ramparts, with the valley dropping away beneath the terrace.

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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