France
Les Baux-de-Provence
Ruined fortress walls dissolving into white rock as if the mountain is slowly swallowing them.
The fortress ruins dissolve into the limestone ridge beneath them, the boundary between built stone and living rock erased by eight centuries of wind. Les Baux-de-Provence in France perches on a spur of the Alpilles, the valley below a patchwork of olive groves and garrigue scrub scented with wild thyme. Up here, the wind is constant and the view extends to the Camargue.
Les Baux-de-Provence gave its name to bauxite — the aluminium ore was first identified in the red soils surrounding the village in 1821. The fortress on the summit dates from the 10th century and was once one of the most powerful strongholds in southern France, its lords claiming descent from the Magi. Cardinal Richelieu ordered the castle demolished in 1632, leaving the ruins that now merge with the cliff. The Carrières de Lumières, an immersive art exhibition projected onto the walls of a former limestone quarry, draws over a million visitors annually. The Alpilles olive oil, produced in the valley below, holds an AOC designation and is among the most prized in Provence.
Solo
The summit path along the fortress ruins, with the Alpilles dropping away on both sides and the wind carrying garrigue scent, is a walk where the boundary between archaeology and geology disappears.
Couple
Carrières de Lumières immerses you in projected art inside a quarry — the scale and darkness make it a shared sensory experience. Follow it with olive oil tasting in the valley below.
- The ruined fortress dissolves into the white rock of the Alpilles ridge — you can't tell where castle ends and cliff begins.
- Carrières de Lumières projects art onto the walls of an old quarry — immersive exhibitions in a cathedral of stone.
- Olive groves in the valley below produce some of the finest oil in Provence — the AOC is among France's most coveted.
- The wind on the summit ridge carries the scent of thyme and rosemary from the garrigue below.
Olive oil from the valley's Moulin Castelas — peppery, green, pressed from Baux's own groves.
Lamb shoulder slow-cooked with Alpilles herbs at L'Oustau de Baumanière.
Pedra de Lume
Cape Verde
Float in a salt lake inside an extinct volcano, crater walls rising on every side.
Vale do Paúl
Cape Verde
Sugarcane terraces spill down a volcanic crater into the greenest valley in the archipelago.
Monastery of St. Anthony
Egypt
Earth's oldest inhabited monastery, wedged into a Red Sea mountain canyon since the fourth century.
Hoang Su Phi
Vietnam
Rice terraces so vertiginous they look like topographical maps carved directly into the sky.
Sénanque Abbey
France
Cistercian silence surrounded by lavender rows so purple they vibrate in the June heat.
Mont-Saint-Michel
France
A granite abbey rising from quicksand flats where the tide races in faster than horses.
Étretat
France
Chalk arches punched through sea cliffs like cathedral windows opening onto the Channel.
Porquerolles
France
Car-free island trails through umbrella pines to beaches with Caribbean water and no crowd.