Home › Getaways › Provence · the Luberon
By carJean-Pol GRANDMONT — CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)Vaucluse, France · France
The Luberon is a limestone range just over sixty kilometres long with a dozen villages perched on its slopes, each a different colour according to the stone it was built from: Gordes is pale grey, Roussillon is ochre in seventeen shades, Bonnieux is golden. Camus, Dora Maar and the Marquis de Sade all lived here, each for his own reasons. Three days is enough to see it calmly without repeating a road.
Gordes, Sénanque and Roussillon · 23 km
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT — CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)viewpoints
The village rises in terraces on a rocky spur, and all of it is built from the same pale limestone, unwhitewashed. The classic view is from the approach road, before you go in.
Stop at the D15 viewpoint before driving up: if you go straight in you miss the very image you came for. And park below, there is no room inside.
10 min to the next stop · 4 km
Greudin — Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)history
A Cistercian abbey from 1148 at the end of a closed valley, without a single ornament: the Cistercians forbade decoration. In front of it lies one of the most photographed lavender fields in France, still farmed by the monks.
The lavender flowers from late June to mid-July and is cut halfway through the month. Outside those three weeks you will see the abbey, but not the photograph.
30 min to the next stop · 19 km
Hawobo at German Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 2.0 de (Wikimedia Commons)nature
No white stone here: the whole village is ochre, in seventeen different shades, because it was built from the local earth. Beside it lie the old quarries, the Sentier des Ocres, walked along a path between red and yellow walls.
Do not wear light clothes on the ochre trail: the dust sticks and never comes out. And go in afternoon light, when the colour bursts.
Ménerbes, Oppède, Bonnieux and Lacoste · 23 km
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A long village on a ridge that became famous outside France when Peter Mayle wrote 'A Year in Provence' here. Before that, Dora Maar lived here, in a house Picasso bought for her.
Mayle's book set off the Luberon tourism boom in the nineties. Locals have mixed feelings about that, and it is not a subject to raise breezily.
10 min to the next stop · 5 km
Nepomuk — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)history
A village abandoned in the 19th century that its people began to reclaim a hundred years later. There are still ruined houses next to inhabited ones, and above them a collegiate church and a half-standing castle.
You walk up from the car park, about fifteen minutes on a cobbled path. It is one of the quietest corners of the Luberon, with hardly any shops, and it shows.
20 min to the next stop · 18 km
ArjenW at nl.wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)history
Two villages facing each other on opposite slopes. In Bonnieux the old church sits at the top, up eighty-six steps and ringed by ancient cedars. In Lacoste stands the castle of the Marquis de Sade, where he took refuge on and off for almost a decade, between scandals and escapes; the couturier Pierre Cardin bought it and partly restored it.
From Bonnieux you see Lacoste and the other way round: they are the two best views in the Luberon, and each has the other village as its backdrop.
Lourmarin and Fontaine-de-Vaucluse · 55 km
ArjenW at Dutch Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)culture
The southern Luberon village, flatter and livelier than the ones up the hill. Albert Camus chose it to live in with his Nobel money and is buried in its cemetery, under a stone bearing nothing but his name.
The Friday market is among the best in Provence. And Camus's grave is to the left as you enter the cemetery, plain and almost hidden among the others.
50 min to the next stop · 39 km
Vi..Cult... — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)nature
The most powerful spring in France and one of the largest in the world: it rises at the foot of a cliff more than two hundred metres high, and its shaft is so deep that no diver has ever reached the bottom: only a robot, in the 1980s, made it past three hundred metres. Petrarch lived here for sixteen years and wrote much of his work.
In spring the water overflows and fills the pool; in summer the level drops and the spring emerges lower down. If you come in August, do not expect the picture from the photographs. And check beforehand that the path to the spring is open, as it is sometimes closed because of rockfalls.
This getaway is in the app, day by day, with every stop on the map, the drives between them and where to sleep, and the option to save it for when there is no signal.
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