Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

All roads lead to Avignon

Sarah Carr-Gomm

Wednesday, 17th September 2008

Sarah Carr-Gomm on Avignon

An expat in Australia was once asked what he missed most about England. ‘France,’ he replied. Reminded by this of what is on our doorstep, I took the weekly summer Eurostar from London to Avignon, which proved an ideal destination for a lover of fine weather, fine fare and lots of history.

The mediaeval traveller would have approached the walled city from the north-west via the Pont Saint-Bénezet, then the only bridge across the Rhône from Lyons to the sea, and made famous by the catchy French ditty. Built in the 12th century, it originally had an impressive 22 arches; only four survive. I have read that the song is not ‘sur le pont’ but ‘sous le pont’, supposedly sung by the thieves lurking underneath, who danced gleefully at the sight of potential victims entering the city. Certainly, if the cobblestones were anything like they are today, dancing on the bridge would surely have been injurious.

The monumental crenellated ramparts of the Palais des Papes can be seen from afar. Soaring out of the rock, they suggest power and paranoia. Over a period of 100 years, seven popes and two anti-popes lived here, and it has since been known as the ‘City of the Popes’. In 1309 the first of these, Clement V, a Frenchman, abandoned anarchic, feuding Rome and moved the centre of the Christian world to the prosperous town at the crossroads of Flanders and the Mediterranean, and Spain and Italy. His successors expanded the Episcopal Palace with courtyards, grand audience chambers, private apartments and chapels, all built in less than 20 years. The modern visitor wanders through empty, cavernous halls, full of exposed masonry and massive fireplaces, scrubbed clean, where roaring fires must have battled to warm winters that could freeze the Rhône.

One can only imagine the luxury of the interior. There is no trace of the tapestries and silks that hung from the walls, the velvet carpets or beds covered in crimson and gold. All that remains are the frescoes in the Pope’s private apartments, painted by Sienese artists, depicting the kingly pursuits of hunting and fishing. With papal expenditure at ten times that of the royal court in Paris, the Popes lived in splendour; pity the sous-chefs at Clement VI’s coronation banquet, where 10,000 guests were served with 1,023 sheep, 118 cattle, 101 calves, 914 kids, 60 pigs, 10,471 hens, 1,440 geese, 300 pike, 46,856 cheeses and 50,000 tarts.

1 | 2 Next page