Provence
The lavender flowers for six weeks; the region works all year
- When to go
- October 17° · 10 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€€price 4 of 5
- How many days
- 5days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 9 km Avignon · 38 km Nîmes
- Right now
Provence is filed in most heads as lavender fields, and those flower for about six weeks, roughly late June to mid-July, and the harvest cuts them straight after. If you are coming for that picture, the date matters; if you are coming for everything else, it does not.
The region is not toured from one base but from two. Avignon and Arles in the west hold the Roman heritage and access to the Rhône valley, twenty minutes apart by train; Aix-en-Provence in the east is closer to Sainte-Victoire and the Luberon villages, an hour's drive from Gordes. Trains link the towns, but villages need a car — there is essentially no public transport to Gordes or Roussillon.
There is more Roman here than people expect. The Pont du Gard is an aqueduct almost fifty metres high, built in the first century without mortar, with a €8 ticket; the arena at Arles and the theatre at Orange are still used for performances and concerts.
What is actually eaten here is not what is sold as Provençal. Bouillabaisse is a Marseille dish made with several rockfish species that are not landed elsewhere; outside Marseille you usually get a pale version of it. Inland the food is lamb, tapenade and vegetables — and the olive oil from the Les Baux valley carries a protected designation.
What to see in Provence
The lavender fields at Valensole
The plateau east of Manosque, the densest fields in the region — mixed in with wheat and sunflowers, so the colour changes plot by plot.
The Pont du Gard
A first-century Roman aqueduct almost fifty metres high, built without mortar. Ticket €8; in summer people swim in the river below, unsupervised and with no jumping off the bridge.
Arles
A Roman arena still in use, and the town where Van Gogh painted over two hundred works in fifteen months.
Gordes and Roussillon
Two Luberon villages: one grey on a rock, the other red with ochre. Both need a car.
Avignon
The fourteenth-century Papal Palace, the largest Gothic building of its kind, ticket €16. In July the town becomes a theatre festival.
The Calanques
Limestone inlets between Marseille and Cassis, reached on foot or by boat. Access is restricted in summer because of fire risk.
Two things you probably did not know
The purple fields of Provence are mostly not lavender but lavandin, a hybrid that sets no seed. It is propagated only from cuttings. Every plant in a field is genetically identical: the whole field is one plant multiplied a thousand times.
The Pont du Gard is a Roman aqueduct forty-nine metres high, built without mortar. Over fifty kilometres the channel drops just twelve metres, a gradient of one centimetre every forty metres, surveyed in the first century.
Ready for Provence?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Provence — day trips or weekends.
France
→From Paris the TGV reaches Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in about two hours — France is chosen by direction, not by city
Italy
→The cities on the high-speed line are an hour or two apart; the coast, Matera and the Tuscan hills lie off it
Spain
→A country where dinner is at ten and the city wakes up as everywhere else turns the lights off
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