Welcome to Les Baux-de-Provence, a village of about twenty permanent residents in its upper streets that receives something like a million and a half visitors a year.
Most of them come for the view and leave with a photograph of a ruin. You are going to do something slower.
Nearly everything you will see today was made by removing something. The castle was not so much built on this rock as cut out of it. The walls were not lost to an enemy; they were taken down, with gunpowder and pickaxes, after the townspeople themselves asked for it. The ruling family died out, the population drained away, and what stayed behind is a set of absences you can still put your hand into: a nesting hole, a rope groove, a window with no house behind it.
Keep that one idea with you as we walk. At each stop, ask what was taken away here, and what the gap still tells you.
Track 0 – Welcome
Begin in the Car Park below the village.
Track 1 – The Approach- The Rock Before the Castle
Begin in the Car Park below the village
- Detail Discovery 1 – Where the Rock Ends and the Wall Begins
- Detail Discovery 2 – The Valley Called Hell
- Photo Opportunity
Track 2 – The Village Street – A Title, Two Flags, and a Window Without a House
Walk up into the Village past the Maison du Roy
- Detail Discovery 3 – The Marquis Who is Eleven
- Detail Discovery 4 – Post Tenebras Lux
- Photo Opportunity
Track 3 – Through the Gate – Chapel, Hospital and Garden
Pass the ticket desk and enter the Chateau Grounds
- Detail Discovery 5 – The Weavers’ Chapel
- Detail Discovery 6 – Jeanne de Quiqueran’s Hospital
- Photo Opportunity
Track 4 – The Plateau – Engines and the Horizon
Step out of the garden onto the open plateau
- Detail Discovery 7 – The Trebuchet
- Detail Discovery 8 – The Ram Under its Roof
- Detail Discovery 9 – The Seventy-Nine Towns
- Photo Opportunity
Track 5 – The Rock-Cut Castle – Rooms without Walls
Turn back north and walk toward the castle along the foot of the cliff
- Detail Discovery 10 – Houses Carved, Not Built
- Detail Discovery 11 – Two Thousand Nests and One Pillory
- Detail Discovery 12 – The Rope Marks
- Detail Discovery 13 – The Saracen Tower and the Keep
- Photo Opportunity
Track 6 – The Summit and the Unmaking
Make the last climb to the top of the keep.
Track 7 – Departure Meditation
Before you descend, find a place out of the wind and stand still.