Valence

Set on a terrace above the Rhône, Valence traditionally marks the symbolic boundary between northern and southern France, a change of climate and landscape you feel as soon as you arrive. The Parc Jouvet, a vast formal and English garden laid out in the nineteenth century along the river, offers a green escape with a view of the first slopes of the Vercors on the horizon. The old town, with its steep lanes typical of the South, is organised around the cathedral of Saint-Apollinaire and the Maison des Têtes, a superb Renaissance façade adorned with sculpted busts. A renowned gourmet stop since the chef Fernand Point founded one of the restaurants that shaped modern French cooking in the twentieth century, Valence today combines a gentle Provençal way of life with the energy of a mid-sized town in the Rhône corridor.

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