# Roussillon and the Ochre Trail — The South of France
> A village the colour of its own cliffs, a footpath through old pigment quarries, and the most saturated landscape in Provence. Roussillon, in the Luberon.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/roussillon-ochre/*

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By **The Editors** — _Roussillon, Vaucluse_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

Roussillon stands on a ridge in the heart of the Luberon, and the whole village is the colour of the ground it stands on — because it is built from it. The houses are washed in every shade the cliffs below them hold: blood red, apricot, burnt orange, pale gold. For two centuries this was a pigment town, and the colour never left.

## I. The village the colour of its cliffs

Climb to the **Castrum** at the top for the view, then come down through the lanes — a façade in oxblood, the next in saffron, shutters the green of old copper. Roussillon is one of the **Plus Beaux Villages de France**, and unusually it earns the title at street level rather than from a postcard distance.

“The houses are painted with the hill itself — there is no other palette here.”

From the notebook

![Ochre-washed façades in a Provençal village](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1578330466360-bd27f92d2fb1?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

A lane in Roussillon — every wall a different reading of the same red earth.

## II. Walking the Sentier des Ocres

Below the village the **Sentier des Ocres** loops through the old quarries — a short marked walk between cliffs and chimneys of raw pigment, the **Chaussée des Géants** rising in pillars of rust and gold. Wear nothing you mind staining; the dust gets into everything, which is rather the point. The path closes in winter and on wet days.

![Ochre cliffs in the evening light](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1614888773798-df30e12a9b6c?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The quarries as the day fades — the ochre catches fire one last time.

## III. Ôkhra and the trade that made the colour

On the road to **Apt**, the old **Usine Mathieu** ochre works is now **Ôkhra**, a conservatory of colour where you can see how the pigment was washed, settled and fired. For more raw landscape, the **Colorado Provençal** at **Rustrel**, a few kilometres east, opens a wider canyon of the same fierce earth.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _walk_

Getting there

Avignon TGV, then about 50 min by car into the Luberon; the nearest market town is **Apt**.

When to go

Late afternoon, when the cliffs burn brightest; spring and autumn over high summer.

Where to stay

**Le Clos de la Glycine**, Roussillon — rooms facing the Val des Fées and the ochre below.

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/)

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