209 Best Sights in Provence, France

The easiest place to view birdlife is the Parc Ornithologique du Pont de Gau. On some 150 acres of marsh and salt lands, birds are protected, and injured birds are treated and kept in large pens to be released if and when they're deemed able to survive. A series of boardwalks (including a short, child-friendly inner loop) snakes over the wetlands, the longest leading to an observation blind, where a half hour of silence, binoculars in hand, can reveal unsuspected satisfactions.

Of all the elegant squares in Aix, this one is the most evocative and otherworldly. Set back from the city's fashionable shopping streets, it forms a horseshoe of shuttered mansions, with cobbles radiating from a simple turn-of-the-20th-century fountain. It makes a fine setting for the chamber music concerts that are held here in summer.

In pretty Place de l'Horloge, a campanile tops the Hôtel de Ville, and you can admire the delicate stonework on the arched portal and mullioned windows of a Renaissance house. Just past the tower on the right is an overlook taking in views toward Gordes, Roussillon, and Mont Ventoux.

Shaded by plane trees, this square is the social nerve center of Avignon, with a concentration of bistros, brasseries, cafés, and restaurants that draw swarms of locals.

On this broad square, the slender, expressive saints of St-Trophime overlook wide steps that attract sun worshippers and foot-weary travelers. The square is also home to the 17th-century Hôtel de Ville, a noble Italianate landmark by the great Parisian architect François Mansart (as in mansard roofs); a passageway allows you to cut through its graceful vestibule from Rue Balze. The obelisk of Turkish marble once stood in the Gallo-Roman cirque but was hauled to the square in the 18th century.

Stand on the site of Van Gogh's residence in Arles—the famous Maison Jaune (Yellow House), which was destroyed by bombs in 1944. The artist may have set up his easel on the Quais du Rhône, just off Place Lamartine, to capture the view that he transformed into his legendary Starry Night. This and nine other sites featured in one Van Gogh canvas or another are marked on the city's Van Gogh Circuit.

A 19th-century statue of the father of the fleur-de-lis reigns under shady pollards on this square with a mellow village feel, a welcome retreat from the clutter of souvenir shops on surrounding lanes. The pretty, bare-bones Église Notre-Dame des Sablons, on one corner of the square, has a timeless air (the church dates from the 13th century, but the stained glass is modern), and the spectacular Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs and Chapelle des Pénitents Gris are Baroque-era marvels.

An ensemble of 18th-century Italianate buildings frames this popular center of activity, bounded by Quai Neuve, Rue Fortia, Rue de la Paix Marcel-Paul, and Cours d'Estienne d'Orves, where one sidewalk café spills into another, and every kind of bouillabaisse is yours for the asking. At night, the neighborhood is a fashionable hangout for young professionals on their way to and from the theaters and clubs on Quai de Rive Neuve.

The remarkable single-arch Roman bridge, built in the 1st century, stands firm across the Ouvèze River.

This bridge is the subject of the famous children's song: "Sur le pont d'Avignon on y danse, on y danse..." ("On the bridge of Avignon one dances, one dances... "). Unlike London Bridge, which fell down in another nursery ditty, Pont St-Bénézet still stretches its arches across the river, but only partway: half was washed away in the 17th century. Its first stones allegedly laid with the miraculous strength granted St-Bénézet in the 12th century, it once reached all the way to Villeneuve.

Legend has it that the 12th-century Pont St-Bénezet—featured in the song “Sur le Pont d’Avignon" (l'on y danse, l’on y danse)—was built after a shepherd boy received orders from heaven. There’s less space for dancing today: although this UNESCO World Heritage site once stretched all the way to Villeneuve, less than four of its original 22 arches remain. It's also a bit narrow for dancing "tous en rond" (round and round), and, besides, the traditional place for dance and play was under the arches. You can, however, climb along its high platform for broad views of the Old Town ramparts. The ticket price includes an audio guide or tablet, and the latter (for which you'll need to show your passport or driver’s license) illustrates how the bridge appeared in medieval times.

He immortalized many everyday objects and captured views still seen today, but Van Gogh's famous painting of the Langlois Bridge over the Canal d'Arles à Bouc—on the southern outskirts of Arles, about 3 km (2 miles) from the old town—seems to strike a particular chord among locals. Bombed in World War II, the bridge has been restored to its former glory. It's one of the 10 sites on the city's Van Gogh Circuit.

If you're an even more committed nature lover, venture into this intensely protected area at the very heart of the Camargue, where a central pond called Le Vaccarès is mostly used as a site for approved scientific research. The wildlife (birds, nutria, fish) is virtually undisturbed here, and you won't come across the cabins and herds of bulls and horses found elsewhere in the Camargue. Made up mostly of vast ponds and marshland, access to this area is limited to horseback, bike, and foot. Paths around its perimeter permit views of the birds and other wildlife. Maps detailing these paths can be downloaded from the Parc Naturel Régional de Camargue website. They're also available from tourist offices in Arles, Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and Port Saint-Louis, as well as bike rental shops in Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer. 

As you wander along these streets, you may feel you have been transported to a Moroccan souk (market). Shops that serve the needs of Marseille's large and vibrant North African community have open bins of olives, coffee beans, tea, spices, chickpeas, couscous, peppers, and salted sardines. Tiny shoebox cafés sell African sweets, and the daily Marché de Noailles in the surrounding maze of streets is the city's most vibrant and colorful market.

This popular trail starts out from the town cemetery and winds through a magical, multicolor palette de pierres (of rocks) replete with eroded red cliffs and chestnut groves. The circuit takes about 45 minutes. Its opening hours are complicated, so check ahead with the tourist office.

This museum and memorial is France's only still-intact deportation camp, where 10,000 men, women, and children of 38 nationalities (2,000 of whom were eventually transferred to Auschwitz) were detained over three years, before the structure was repurposed as an armaments factory. Direct contact with internment areas, including sleeping and dining quarters and hiding places, makes for a rare immediacy. Traces of the many artists and intellectuals who were detained here, including Surrealist artists Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer and novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, can be found in the many artworks displayed (all made here), and the graffiti still vibrantly intact on the walls. At the conclusion of the visit, you retrace the deportees' path to a railroad wagon parked near the main building, a sobering reminder of a terrible chapter in French history.

This is the isolated asylum where Van Gogh spent the last year of his life (1889–90). Enter quietly: the hospital shelters psychiatric patients to this day, all of them women. You're free to walk up the beautifully manicured garden path to the church and its jewel-box Romanesque cloister, where the artist found womblike peace.

Established in 1367, the oldest synagogue in constant operation in France—and one of the oldest in Europe—is a testament to the protection of “the papal Jews” in Avignon, Carpentras, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, and Cavaillon. Although persecuted throughout Europe, under the French popes, the Jewish people were given asylum in medieval Comtat Venaissin (roughly the Vaucluse of today). It was an asylum that lasted from the 14th century till the Revolution. After being granted French citizenship in 1791—when Avignon and the Vaucluse finally became part of France—many Jews left the area, free to live where they pleased

The synagogue of today was built over the original 14th-century foundations, where you can still see an underground bread bakery (in use until 1904), a ritual bath, study rooms, and even quarries for building material used in upward expansion (outward expansion was forbidden). The baroque-style sanctuary dates from the 18th century, when the Jews of Carpentras were finally permitted to rebuild the synagogue, which had fallen into disrepair. They were, however, forced to remove its arched ceiling so as not to exceed the height of St-Siffrein cathedral. Guided visits of the synagogue are by reservation only, but you can also learn about this fascinating chapter of history at the L’Inguimbertine museum, a five-minute walk away.

This Roman ruin dates from the end of the 1st century BC and is thought to have been part of a larger complex that is still unexcavated. In the Middle Ages, Benedictine nuns occupied the building before it was converted into a church. Destruction came during the Wars of Religion.

Orange's spectacular Théâtre Antique, a colossal Roman theater, was built in the time of Caesar Augustus. The vast stone stage wall, bouncing sound off the facing hillside, climbs four stories high—a massive sandstone screen that Louis XIV once referred to as the "finest wall in my kingdom." The niche at center stage contains the original statue of Augustus, just as it reigned over centuries of productions of classical plays. Today, the theater provides a backdrop for world-class theater and opera.

Directly up Rue de la Calade from Place de la République are the ruins of an amphitheater that was built by the Romans under Augustus in the 1st century BC and once held 10,000 audience members. Today, it's a pleasant, parklike retreat that's used as a site for the Festival d'Arles in July and August and for Les Recontres d'Arles (Photography Festival) from early July to mid-September. Much of the amphitheater's fine local stone was repurposed in early Christian churches, so only two columns of its stage walls, one row of arches, and vestiges of original stone benches remain. It was here, though, that the noted Venus of Arles statue, now in the Louvre, was dug up and identified.

Warm natural springs first discovered under the leadership of Sextius, the Thermes now house the glass walls of an ultramodern health spa. The small fountain in the interior marks the warm spring of the original 18th-century establishment. Today, the facility's offerings include a great gym, pressure showers, mud treatments, and underwater massages.

The stout walls and ramparts of this Gothic fortress, once a state-of-the-art marvel, are astonishingly well preserved. The tower is particularly impressive, as are the vistas of the surrounding Camargue. Temporary exhibitions are held along the ramparts in summer; there's also a permanent exhibit on the history of Protestantism in the region.

At the far end of the Jardins de la Fontaine are the remains of a tower the emperor Augustus had built on Gallic foundations; it was probably used as a lookout post. Despite losing 30 feet in height over the course of time, the tower still provides fine views of Nîmes for anyone energetic enough to climb the 140 steps.

Smaller and more picturesque than Beaumes, with stone houses scattered along its gentle slopes, Vacqueyras gives its name to a robust, tannic red wine worthy of its more famous neighbors Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas. Wine domaines beckon from the outskirts of town, and the center is dotted with plane trees, adorned with cascading wisteria, and punctuated by discreet tasting shops. Thanks to its consistently rising quality, Vacqueyras is one of the latest of the Côtes du Rhônes to earn its own appellation—that is, the right to put its village name on the bottle instead of the less prestigious, more generic Côtes du Rhône label.

This old town neighborhood, which you must cross to hike from one Roman monument to the other, carries on peacefully when there's not a blockbuster spectacle in the theater. Lining its broad squares, under heavy-leaved plane trees, are a handful of shops and a few sidewalk cafés.

Within St-Rémy's fast-moving traffic loop, a labyrinth of narrow streets leads you away from the action and into the slow-moving inner sanctum of the vieille ville. Here trendy, high-end shops mingle pleasantly with local life, and the buildings, if gentrified, blend in unobtrusively.

Although the fascinating, hivelike structures called bories (shepherds' shelters built with tight-fitting, mortarless stone) are found throughout this region of Provence, this ancient community has about 20 of them. Their origins are provocatively vague—perhaps dating from the eras of the Celts or the Ligurians or even from the Iron Age—and they were inhabited or used for sheep through the 18th century. A photo exhibition shows structures similar to bories in countries around the world. Look for signs to the village just outside Gordes, on a lane heading north from D2.

Three kilometers (2 miles) north of Bandol via the D559 is this zoo and garden, where cacti and exotic tropical plants grow to remarkable sizes. In a small zoo setting, animals such as flamingos, gibbons, and gazelles frolic in shady gardens.