Avignon

Avignon owes its unique place in French history to the seven popes who settled the papacy here in the 14th century, leaving behind them the Palais des Papes, the largest Gothic building in the world, and a walled town surrounded by almost four and a half kilometres of nearly intact medieval ramparts. The Saint-Bénézet bridge, immortalised by the nursery rhyme, reaches unfinished into the Rhône from the foot of the Rocher des Doms, a hanging garden offering an exceptional view over the river and the surrounding Provence. Inside the walls, a dense network of lanes and small squares shaded by plane trees is home to mansions, museums and, every summer, one of the most renowned theatre festivals in the world. Préfecture of the Vaucluse, Avignon thus combines an exceptional monumental heritage with a particularly intense cultural life.

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