Our trip to Avignon occurred very early in our French sojourn, but I have just been slack in adding it to the blog. We enjoyed the place so much we actually went twice!
Avignon is an ancient city on the Rhone River between Montpellier and Marseilles. It was occupied by the early tribes, then the Romans as a major city, by the Pope's in the 14th century and has accumulated a lot of history!
The first time we went by train to visit the Pope's Palace, one of the places on my must see list. The train trip was an easy one hour from Montpellier and we had a great day wandering around the town, discovering the Synagogue (a slight digression: a separate email about this went to my Jewish friends and relatives and was published in the newsletter of the Synagogue I used to work for), the Market and lots of old buildings. It poured with rain all day (you will notice some rain drops on some of my photos) on the first visit and the train was delayed for an hour going home because the tracks were flooded! This was in summer I might add!!!!
When advertisements appeared for a sound & light spectacular at the nearby Roman aqueduct, we decided to make a weekend of it and revisit Avignon as well. this time we drove and it was much easier. It was also a beautiful weekend weather wise, especially on the Saturday. So here is a brief look at Avignon.
Pont du Gard
This was the highest Roman Aqueduct ever built and is still in fabulous repair. You can walk across it, on a newer concrete path they have integrated into the aqueduct, but it is still pretty phenomenal to realise how big and old this structure is. We saw several aqueducts in Turkey 2 years ago, but none as good as this. I also loved the very very old olive tree still growing by the side of the aqueduct. They also put on a sound and light spectacular here for a period of 2 weeks over summer. They did it for the first time last year, and it was so successful they repeated it this year. We have to say it was spectacular. This was our first experience of French sound and light shows and it blew us away. The special effects are amazing and I am still not sure how they achieved all of them. The flight scenes we had seen them practising during the day on the flying fox, but at night you cannot see the wire of the flying fox, so it appears natural. We have since seen other sound & light shows at the chateaux (see a recent blog), but looking back at these photos, it is still amazing what they did.
Views of Avignon
The views of Avignon from the island in the Rhone River or just from the river side were brilliant. Although it does not appear to be that high, it does sit up above the river and you get the full effect of the walled city and also see how large the Pope's Palace and cathedral complex really are. You can also get a great view of the hills surrounding Avignon.
The Pont D'Avignon (Pont = bridge)
As soon as we told our French friends we were going to Avignon, they all spontaneously burst into song. It appears there is a famous children's song about dancing on or under the Bridge at Avignon, that we had never heard, but all the French learn it when young. When we mentioned this to our friend Cecily from Melb, she also burst into song - she knew it - so we decided that we were just ignorant philistines and went and enjoyed the bridge anyway!
The bridge dates back to about the 9th or 11th centuries and was the first bridge they were able to build in this area across the fast flowing Rhone River. But various floods kept destroying or damaging it and when half of it collapsed in the 16th century, they just left it there and built a new bridge. But because the bridge had so much history attached to it even then and there was also a chapel to the Saint of ????? built into the bridge, they did not pull it down.
Inside Avignon
Avignon was fabulous. It was a genuine walled city, but unlike Carcassonne, which was a bit fairytale like and now exists just for the tourists (see a very early blog entry), Avignon is a modern, living city enclosed by history. There were the lovely narrow streets (and some of them were very narrow) and old buildings, but also a spectacular modern market hall with the whole exterior wall covered in living plants (photo below), modern shops, some great tromp l'oeils, etc.
Photos in order: the narrow street leading to the Pope's Palace, the tromp l'oeil at the other end of the street, the market wall, our beautiful hotel on the island, the Synagogue and two old buildings with religious statues built into the walls - very common throughout France, the old Mint / Treasury building and a museum, previously part of the Pope's Palace complex. The last photo was taken in the wine tasting room at the end of the palace tour. It is a collection of little bottles, each one containing a different essence of all the aromas to be found when sniffing wine!
The Pope's Palace
For those of you who don't know the history - a very brief, cynical and simplified summary. In the 14th century (1300's) there was a lot of political turmoil in Italy, plus the Black Plague, so the Pope's decamped to Avignon. Avignon was chosen because the current pope had come from there originally and it was in France, not Rome or neighbouring Italian states (lot's of political intrigue here). As a result, the popes remained in Avignon for a century, nearly dividing the Catholic church. Eventually an Italian pope decided to return to Rome and they've stayed there ever since. However, in that century, a total of seven popes resided at Avignon, built a monumental palace and cathedral and associated buildings eg treasury. They are now historical monuments & ripe pickings for tourists. However they are genuinely magnificent. Unfortunately there are not a lot of photos of the inside, because we were not allowed to take photos, but once again I was very naughty and sneaked a few in. However, I avoid using flash, a/ because constant flashlight can eventually damage old artworks, b/ so I won't be so obvious and c/ because flash can distort the colours and often won't reach far enough anyway. So these are hand held, snapshots of what I could take quickly.
Firstly, as you can see, the city walls are still in tact and good repair. The front entrance is very impressive and faces a huge square or "Place" in French, "Piazza" in Italian.
The Island
The island in the river contained a number of significant historical buildings - a castle, a tower, and a monastery. We ran out of time to look through the monastery, but we did visit the castle and the tower - both very impressive and both provided excellent views back to Avignon.
The Cathedral
This is located next to the Pope's Palace for obvious reasons and provided some lovely examples of church architecture, sculpture, frescoes and stained glass windows. The doors were pretty impressive too - not for their carving or beauty but for their sheer size and imposing nature!
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