# Les Baux-de-Provence and the Carrières de Lumières — The South of France
> A ruined fortress village on a rock spur in the Alpilles, and a quarry turned into a cathedral of projected light. Les Baux-de-Provence, in the Bouches-du-Rhône.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/les-baux-de-provence/*

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By **The Editors** — _Les Baux-de-Provence_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

Les Baux rides a spur of white rock in the heart of the **Alpilles**, a village and a ruined fortress so fused with the stone that from below you cannot tell where the cliff ends and the walls begin. It is one of the **Plus Beaux Villages de France**, and it gave its name to the mineral first found here — **bauxite**, the ore of aluminium.

## I. The fortress on the rock

The **Château des Baux** spreads across the top of the spur, a vast medieval ruin of towers, keep and rock-cut chambers with siege engines on the terraces and the whole plain of the Alpilles falling away below. Beneath it the village proper is a single climbing street of honey stone, Renaissance houses and small squares — best walked early, before the day fills it.

“You cannot tell where the cliff ends and the castle begins — they are the same white stone.”

From the notebook

![A climbing street of pale stone houses in a hill village](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1566720537031-8b3e498d2881?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The village street of Les Baux — Renaissance stone on the climb to the castle.

## II. The Carrières de Lumières

Just below the village, the old **limestone quarries** — galleries cut in sheer white walls thirty feet high — have become the **Carrières de Lumières**, where a whole painter’s work is projected across floor, walls and ceiling to music. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Klimt: each year a new show fills the cavern with moving colour. It is the most extraordinary art experience in the South, and the coolest place to be on a hot day.

![A vast quarry wall washed in projected colour](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1578330466360-bd27f92d2fb1?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

Inside the Carrières — a painter’s whole world thrown across the rock.

## III. The Alpilles around it

Les Baux sits at the heart of the **Alpilles**, the small dry limestone range of olive groves and garrigue that gives one of France’s finest olive oils, the **Vallée des Baux** AOC. **Saint-Rémy-de-Provence** is fifteen minutes north; the whole massif is laced with walking and cycling roads through pine and rock.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _visit_

Getting there

About 30 min from Avignon or Arles by car; there is no train, and parking is below the village.

When to go

Spring and autumn; come at opening, as the village fills by late morning.

Where to stay

**Baumanière**, in the valley below, an old farm turned country hotel with a famous table.

Read next

[Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Van Gogh and Glanum](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/saint-remy-de-provence/)

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

### More from the _South_

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