France
Avignon
Papal palace walls thick enough to hold centuries of political intrigue and Rhône wind.
The palace walls are thick enough to contain centuries. The Palais des Papes in France's Avignon rises from the rock like a cliff face dressed in Gothic arches, the largest medieval palace in Europe and still radiating the authority that pulled the papacy out of Rome for 67 years. The mistral wind hits the Rhône below and the bridge stops mid-river, going nowhere, held up by stubbornness alone.
Avignon served as the seat of the papacy from 1309 to 1376, during which seven successive popes built and expanded the Palais des Papes into the largest Gothic palace in the world, covering 15,000 square metres. The palace's construction consumed 10,000 cubic metres of stone and its walls reach up to five metres thick. The Pont Saint-Bénézet — the Pont d'Avignon of the nursery rhyme — originally spanned 900 metres across the Rhône but now ends after four arches, the remainder destroyed by floods in the 17th century. The Festival d'Avignon, founded by Jean Vilar in 1947, is one of the world's most important performing arts festivals, staging productions in the Cour d'Honneur of the palace and venues across the city each July. The surrounding Rhône valley produces Châteauneuf-du-Pape, one of France's most celebrated wine appellations, from vineyards visible from the palace ramparts.
Solo
The palace interior is vast enough to absorb hours — the scale of the Great Chapel, the frescoes in the Pope's private chambers, the view from the rooftop across the Rhône. The broken bridge afterward is a meditation on the futility of permanence.
Couple
The Festival d'Avignon in July turns every courtyard into a stage. Even outside the festival, the palace courtyard at dusk, with the stone still warm and the Rhône darkening below, justifies the wine and the shared silence.
Friends
Wine tasting in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, theatre at the festival, the palace at sunset, dinner in the Place de l'Horloge. Avignon gives a group enough culture and conviviality to fill a long weekend without repetition.
- The Palais des Papes is the largest Gothic palace in the world — the scale of papal power is visible in every vault.
- The broken bridge — Pont d'Avignon — stops mid-river, and standing on the end looking at the Rhône is strangely moving.
- The Festival d'Avignon every July fills every courtyard, church, and street corner with theatre — the whole city is a stage.
- Rhône wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape are twenty minutes away — the vineyards start where the city walls end.
Berlingots — hard candy sweets in a rainbow of flavours, handmade in Avignon's confiseries.
Châteauneuf-du-Pape poured in the shadow of the palace walls — the Rhône's royal wine.
Khajuraho
India
Elaborate sandstone temples covered in explicitly acrobatic carvings rising unexpectedly from the flat central plains.
Chiang Rai
Thailand
A temple built entirely of white mirror glass reflecting pop-culture damnation inside Buddhist serenity.
Mandawa
India
Decaying merchant mansions covered in elaborate frescoes turn a desert town into an art gallery.
Ouro Preto
Brazil
Baroque churches dripping gold leaf in a mining town where the cobblestones still remember revolution.
Saint-Malo
France
Granite ramparts ringing a corsair city where the tide locks you in twice a day.
Sète
France
Canal-laced fishing port where jousting boats clash and Brassens's ghost haunts every quay.
Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert
France
A Carolingian abbey hidden in a gorge where Charlemagne's knight retired to pray.
Vézelay
France
A hilltop basilica radiating light through Romanesque capitals where crusades once began.