Le Barroux

Of all the marvelous hilltop villages stretching across the South of France, this tiny ziggurat of a town has a special charm. Le Barroux has more than a whiff of fairy tale in the air, lording over a patchwork landscape as finely drawn as a medieval illumination, as bright as an illustration in a children’s book. This aerie has just one small church, a post office, and one tiny old épicerie (small grocery store) selling canned goods, yellowed postcards, and today’s La Provence. You are forced, therefore, to look around you and listen to the trickle of the ancient fountains at every labyrinthine turn. Houses, cereal-box slim, seem to grow out of the bedrock, closing in around your suddenly unwieldy car.