Palais des Papes Review

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Palais des Papes

Fodor's Review:

The Renaissance chronicler Jean Froissart called this palace "the loveliest and strongest house in the world," while Petrarch sneered, "The houses of the apostles crumble as (popes) raise up their palaces of massy gold." Within these magnificent Gothic walls, one of the heydays (or low points) in French history took place, a period of extraordinary sacred and secular power and, to skeptics, outrageous wealth. Once densely decorated in tapestries, frescoes, and sumptuous fabrics, it hosted feasts of Lucullan extravagance and witnessed intrigues of Gothic proportion. The pope ruled within as half god, half prince, eating alone at an elevated table in the crowded dining hall, sleeping in a lavishly decorated bedroom distinctly devoid of sacred reference. His chamberlain's bedroom had eight hiding holes, complete with trapdoors concealed under carpets; who knows to what use they were put?

But don't expect to see eye-boggling luxury today. Resentful Revolutionaries hacked away most traces of excess in the 1780s, and, ironically, what remains has a monastic purity. Most of all you may be struck by the scale; either one of its two wings dwarfs the cathedral beside it, and between them they cover almost 50,000 feet of surface. The grand-scale interiors are evocative as well, with a massive wooden barrel vault arching over the dining hall like a boat belly and a kitchen with fireplaces big enough to house a family. The Grande Audience (Grand Audience Hall) and the Grande Chapelle are as vast as cathedrals.

From your first exterior view of them, note the difference between the two wings of the palace. The north end, toward the cathedral, is the Palais Vieux (Old Palace), a severe Cistercian bastion built by the sober Pope Benedict XII between 1335 and 1342; the south end was built over the next ten years with slightly airier fantasy by Pope Clement VI, who prized his creature comforts.

An enthusiastic patron of the arts, Clement VI brought in a team of artists from Italy to decorate his digs. It was led by no less than Simone Martini himself, imported from Siena and Assisi (where he had worked with Giotto). On his death, Mattheo Giovanetti took the lead, and the frescoes that covered every surface must have been one of the wonders of the world. Some of the finest traces remain in Clement's study, called the Chambre du Cerf (Stag's Room), where the walls still retain the lovely frescoes he commissioned in 1343. Unlike the Raphael masterpieces that decorate the Vatican chambers in Rome, which use lofty classical themes and powerful Christian images, these paintings depict simple hunting scenes: a stag hunt, bird snaring, and fishing. They're graceful, almost naive in style, and intimate in scale, but the attempts at perspective in the deep window frames remind you that this was an advanced center of culture and learning in the 14th century, and perspective was then downright avant-garde, fresh from the sketchbooks of Giotto. Among many fragments, one other example of Giovanetti's work can be viewed in its entirety in Chapelle St-Jean (St. John Chapel), a masterpiece of composition in which the interplay of hands and the implied lines of gazes create a silent dialogue.

Though you may be anxious to see the more famous spaces, take time on entering to study the scale model of the palace in its medieval context. Only then can you take in its enormity, looming like Olympus over the tiny half-timber houses that crowded the Place du Palais—a palace worthy of a royal dynasty and a temple to holy hubris.

For wine lovers, there's a wine cellar devoted to Côtes du Rhônes at the Bouteillerie (04-90-27-50-85) of the Popes' Palace where you can sample and buy regional wines; the selection changes every year and the shop is open daily. Although it's in the Palais, you don't need to pay admission to go to the store.

  • Cost: EUR 9.50 entry includes choice of guided tour or individual audioguide; EUR 10.50 includes audioguided tour to pont St-Bénézet
  • Open: Oct.-Mar., daily 9:30-5:45; Apr.-Nov., daily 9-7; July, during theater festival, daily 9-9
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