Avignon

The palace walls are thick enough to contain centuries. The Palais des Papes rises from its rock above the Rhône, in southern France, like a cliff face dressed in Gothic arches, the largest Gothic palace in the world and still radiating the authority that pulled the papacy out of Rome for most of the fourteenth century. Below it the mistral hits the Rhône and the bridge of the song stops mid-river, going nowhere, held up by stubbornness alone.

Seven popes ruled from Avignon between 1309 and 1376, and the palace they built — fortress and residence in one — is the biggest Gothic building of its kind anywhere, its vast chapel, audience halls and frescoed private chambers open to visit with a rooftop view over the river. The Pont Saint-Bénezet, the Pont d'Avignon of the nursery rhyme, once crossed the whole Rhône and now ends after four arches, the rest carried off by floods long ago; standing on the broken end looking at the water is strangely moving. Every July the Festival d'Avignon, founded by Jean Vilar in 1947, turns the palace courtyard and every church, cloister and street corner into a stage. Avignon is also the capital of the Côtes du Rhône, and Châteauneuf-du-Pape begins a short drive north — the vineyards start where the city walls end.