Avignon; Sunday, 26 November, 2023

A well deserved lie-in after the previous days early start and then out to explore more of the city, starting by heading to the city walls and following them round for almost half their length up to the Pont Saint-Benezet, otherwise known as the Pont d'Avignon.

The bridge was originally constructed to link the two banks of the Rhône river, but poor construction, changing river flows and just the general power of this long river nearing the end of its course, lead to the loss of most of the structure so that today only a couple of arches of the bridge linked to the Avignon bank, and connected into the city walls, still survive. The part that does survive was clearly the most well built section as tourists are happily allowed to walk out on it, taking in the views of the centre of the city, the walls and the river.

Having taken in the bridge, and the small section of the city wall that you are also able to access from the bridge I headed back up into the centre of the old town to visit the main attraction of the city – the Palais des Papes, or Papal Palace.

For around 70 years in the 14th century the leader of the Catholic Church ruled not from Rome but from Avignon, with seven Popes having their seat in the city – then on the border of the Holy Roman Empire and across the Rhône the Kingdom of France. In that time they built themselves a richly furnished palace, but as was the style at the time from the outside it more resembles a fortress.

Inside you can wander around most of the building taking in the various rooms of the building from large dining and assembly rooms to the smaller apartment rooms of the pontiff. You can also head down into the Papal gardens, located deep inside the complex but a beautiful sun trap and hidden away from the strong winds that regularly blow across the city.

I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the palace, including heading up onto the roof of the structure from where you can take in some of the best views of the city, before finally leaving just before they started kicking everyone out anyway.

I headed back down the main road towards the station and my hotel diverting into the Musée Lapidaire. Housed in a former Jesuit church the museum has a wide collection of artefacts from Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquity. It’s amazing quite how much they’ve managed to pack into a relatively small space with every part of the building filled with statues, mosaics, tablets, alters, bits of architecture and so many oil lamps.

I’d just finished looking round and was leaving the museum as a couple of gendarmes popped in to ask the museum to close for a short while as a protest march was just about to go past, so rather than heading back straight down the main street, against a flow of protestors, I headed back down through the small back streets before following the walls back round to the station and my hotel to freshen up before popping out a little later to grab some dinner.