AVIGNON TO VALENCE, 94½ MILES
(152 KILOMETRES)
DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE
Kil. Miles.
=Avignon= to Sorgues =10= 6¼
=Sorgues= to Orange =17= 10½
Avignon to Orange through Villeneuve and Roquemaure is a little
longer.
=Orange= to Pierrelatte =31= 19¼
=Pierrelatte= to Montélimar =22= 13¾
=Montélimar= to Loriol =23= 14¼
=Loriol= to Valence =22= 13¾
NOTES FOR DRIVERS
A level road in the Rhone Valley all the way, except about 6
kilometres north of Donzère. The shallow drains called _cassis_ or
_caniveaux_ are very frequent. They are all marked with
warning-boards.
PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE
=Avignon.=--A picturesque walled city on the Rhone: (1) The Popes
transferred their seat there between 1305 and 1411--their palace, a
huge fortress, dominates the city; (2) Cathedral of Notre Dame des
Doms, an interesting Romanesque building; (3) Archbishop’s Palace,
now a seminary; (4) Bridge of St. Bénézet, with Romanesque chapel;
(5) fourteenth-century walls and gateways; churches of--(6) St.
Pierre; (7) St. Didier; (8) St. Agricol.
=Villeneuve-les-Avignons.=--Interesting old town on right bank of
Rhone: (1) Fort St. André, containing remains of Benedictine abbey;
(2) square tower for defence of the Bridge of St. Bénézet; (3)
parish church of fourteenth century; (4) hospital, containing
picture-gallery and magnificent tomb of Innocent VI.
=Roquemaure.=--A small town, dominated by the ruins of its castle.
=Orange.=--A quiet little town, containing two magnificent Roman
structures--(1) A triumphal arch, (2) a large theatre; the Church
of Notre Dame belongs to the twelfth century.
=Piolenc.=--Small town, with remains of ramparts and a Cluniac
priory.
=Mornas.=--Another small town, with medieval gateway and ruins of
twelfth-century château on the cliff above.
=Montdragon.=--A village, dominated by a fine château of the eleventh
century.
=Lapalud.=--A dusty roadside village.
=Pierrelatte.=--A poor little town by an isolated mass of rock, from
which the place gets its name.
=Donzère.=--A small town, with old walls, gateway, a ruined castle,
and a Romanesque church.
=Montélimar.=--A busy modern town, famous for its almond ‘nougat’;
dominating the place on the east side is the Romanesque château,
now a prison; two gateways of the ramparts and two
fifteenth-century houses survive.
=Saulce.=--A village, with a few slight Roman remains near to the
Château of Freycinet.
=Livron.=--A little town, with walls and a ruined castle.
[Illustration: TOWN PLAN NO. 26.--AVIGNON.]
It is unfortunate that Avignon has straggling suburbs outside its circle
of wonderfully preserved walls, for if this new growth could be swept
away there would appear on the plain a city of medieval aspect,
encircled within its machicolated ramparts. Until this is done those who
delight in such permanent pictures of the Middle Ages must be content
with the views of the walls to be had from the fairly wide boulevards
outside them and from the river side of the town. From across the Rhone
the strange piled-up mass of the Papal palace shows a striking
silhouette, and gives Avignon that feeling of romance so lacking in some
towns whose relics of the past are more remarkable.
It was in the year 1305 that Pope Clement V. removed the headquarters of
the representatives of St. Peter from Rome to Avignon, and it remained
there until 1411, when what Petrarch termed ‘a shameful exile’ came to
an end and the Popes returned to Rome. During the century of their
residence in Avignon the Popes built the enormous pile of buildings
called a palace, although it is a forbidding fortress and one of the
finest examples of fourteenth-century military architecture in
existence. It is, as Hare has fittingly described it, ‘rather the
citadel of an Asiatic tyrant than the representative of the God of
peace.’ The walls and towers encircling the town were begun by Innocent
VI. (1352-1362), and finished by his successor, Urban V.
Until lately the palace was utilized for barracks, but fortunately the
soldiers are now quartered elsewhere, and the restorers are peeling off
plaster and taking down the ugly walls and partitions of recent times,
thus bringing to light the original splendour of the Papal residence. A
magnificently carved stone doorway of large dimensions has been
literally dug out of a most unpromising wall, and when the work is
completed the palace-fortress will be one of the most remarkable of the
historic monuments of France. Fortunately, one of the smaller
apartments, with richly painted walls and ceilings, was sufficiently
remarkable to escape the destructive hands of those who built up the
great doorway, and the chapels in the Tour St. Jean are also covered
with wall paintings. The palace is built on a raised mass of rock, and
some of the irregularities of design are due to this fact.
Just to the north, on the same rock, is the interesting Romanesque
Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms, first built in early Christian times
on the site of a Roman temple. Of the 157 Cardinals and Bishops buried
in the church there are no monuments, and even the elaborate tomb of
Pope John XXII., at one time in the middle of the nave, has been placed
in the antechamber leading to the sacristy. This John XXII., who held
the Chair of St. Peter between 1316 and 1334, was the son of a shoemaker
of Cahors. His genius seems to have lain chiefly in the acquisition of
vast wealth, for when he died he had laid up treasure on earth
[Illustration: No. 20. AVIGNON TO VALENCE.]
in his newly built castle to the extent of eighteen millions of gold
florins in specie and seven millions in plate and jewels! Milman also
describes him as harsh and relentless and a cruel persecutor, who
betrayed joy not only at the discomfiture but at the slaughter of his
enemies, and then goes on to speak of the fame of his piety and
learning, and how he rose every night to pray and to study and every
morning to attend Mass. One has to think of this cruel and callous Pope
kneeling at night to thank God for his great wealth laid up for many
years, for his success in overcoming his enemies, and perhaps for the
general feeling of comfort and security given by the massive walls of
his fortress. His successor, Benedict XII., pulled down John’s buildings
and put up much of the present palace.
Beyond the cathedral is a public garden, sheltered from the sun and the
fierce mistral by a close growth of trees and bushes. An outer walk
commands a magnificent view over the Rhone, with the broken bridge of
St. Bénézet throwing its four arches into the irresistible waters down
below. It was during a republic which lasted from 1135 to 1251 that the
bridge was built. It originally had nineteen arches, and above one of
the piers was built a chapel to St. Nicholas. This interesting little
structure still survives, and is illustrated in these pages.
A favourite nursery rhyme, known to anyone who has had a French nurse,
is:
‘Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse;
Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse tous en rond.’
The best of the churches is _St. Pierre_, to the south of the Papal
palace. It has an elaborate façade, built in 1520, and richly carved
doors. _St. Didier_ is of the fourteenth century, and contains the grave
of St. Bénézet under a slab in the centre of the nave. Near this church
is the Hôtel Crillon, a fine example of the domestic architecture of
the seventeenth century. _St. Agricol_ dates from 1340.
The palace of the Archbishop of Avignon is a picturesque old building,
dating from early in the fourteenth century. It is now a _Petit
Séminaire_.
Villeneuve-les-Avignon, on the west side of the Rhone, attracts one from
the first, with its romantic grouping under the imposing bulk of the
fourteenth-century _Fort St. André_. The great square tower by the
river, also of yellow stone, was built by Philippe le Bel for the
defence of the bridge. Inside the Fort St. André are the remains of a
Benedictine abbey and a Romanesque chapel.
The interesting parish church of Villeneuve dates from the fourteenth
century, and contains the tomb of Cardinal Arnauld de Via, the founder.
In the chapel of the hospital on the other side of the street is the
splendid tomb of Pope Innocent VI. (1352-1362), who did much to make
amends for the misdeeds of Clement VI. The richly sculptured canopy
rises in pinnacles to the roof, and the whole work reveals the enormous
wealth of the Avignonese Popes.
In the picture-gallery of the hospital one of the most interesting works
is the portrait of the lovely Marquise de Castellane, who, with her
husband, was much at the Court of Louis XIV., and became known as ‘La
Belle Provençale.’ When the Marquis de Castellane died she married the
Marquis de Ganges, and returned with him to Avignon. Here she was
subjected to the unpleasant attentions of her brother-in-law, the
Chevalier de Ganges, whose ill-controlled and illicit passion she firmly
resisted, in spite of the efforts of another brother-in-law, the Abbot
de Ganges. It was this villainous ecclesiastic who finally gave the
beautiful Marquise poison, and the brutal Chevalier, on finding her
dying, ran his rapier through her body several times. Both brothers were
condemned to be broken alive on the wheel.
Roquemaure has the ruins of a picturesque medieval castle, where Clement
V., the first of the Avignonese Pontiffs, died in 1314.
The road crosses the Rhone about two kilometres north of Roquemaure, and
a short six miles brings one to
ORANGE
This quiet old town contains two astonishingly perfect relics of the
Roman city of _Aurasio_--a triumphal arch and a theatre. The first
stands on a circle of grass just outside the present town, and the road
leading up to it in both directions gives the great arch a most striking
position. A certain amount of restoration has been carried out, but it
does not detract from the impressiveness of the work. There are several
sculptured panels, and a frieze in which one can still see a great deal
of a big battle subject.
It is generally believed that this is the triumphal arch put up in A.D.
21 to commemorate the victory of Tiberius over Sacrovir and Florus. It
is certainly the best in France, and there are only two others in the
world that surpass it in size and importance.
The theatre is an astonishingly perfect structure, retaining the
enormous stone wall forming the back of the building. It is 118 feet
high, 340 feet long, and 13 feet thick, and no doubt it was spared
during the Middle Ages owing to its usefulness as an outer barbican or
bastion to the castle on the high ground immediately above. There are
indications showing that the theatre was roofed, and evidences of fire
on the top of the vast wall reveal the agency which removed this unique
feature. The three tiers of seats were cut out of the hillside, so that
the building-up of the great auditorium was greatly simplified. The
lowest tier of seats has been wonderfully well preserved, and the
others have been reconstructed in recent years for the annual dramatic
and lyrical performances given by the Comédie Française in August.
‘In August, 1886, a venture was made at Orange the like of which
has rarely been made in France in modern times: a new French play
demanding positive and strong recognition, the magnificent
“Empereur d’Arles,” by the Avignon poet Alexis Mouzin, was given
its first presentation in the Orange Theatre--in the
provinces--instead of first being produced on the Paris stage. In
direct defiance of the modern French canons of centralization, the
great audience was brought together not to ratify opinions
formulated by Parisian critics, but to express its own opinion at
first hand. Silvain, of the Comédie Française, was the _Maximien_;
Madame Caristie-Martel, of the Odéon (a granddaughter of Caristie,
the architect who saved the theatre from ruin), was the
_Minervine_. The support was strong. The stately tragedy--vividly
contrasting the tyranny and darkness of pagan Rome with the spirit
of light and freedom arising in Christian Gaul--was in perfect
keeping with its stately frame. The play went on in a whirl of
enthusiastic approval to a triumphant end. There was no question of
ratifying the opinion of Parisian critics: those Southerners formed
and delivered an opinion of their own. In other words, the defiance
of conventions was an artistic victory, a decentralizing success’
(Thomas A. Janvier).
Thus the theatre of the second century, having come in comparative
safety through the great gulf of time separating the present from the
Roman civilization, is now given a new term of active existence,
making, with the amphitheatres of Nîmes and Arles and the roadway of the
Pont du Gard, the fourth Roman structure in France still in use for its
original purpose.
The _Church of Notre Dame_ was formerly a cathedral, and was first built
by Liberius, Prefect of the Gauls. On the ruins of that building the
present church was erected, about the twelfth century, or soon
afterwards. It is small and has neither transepts nor triforia.
Orange became the capital of a small principality in the eleventh
century, and in 1531, on the death of Philibert of Châlons, the little
State was inherited by Count Réné of Nassau-Dillenburg, who, being
childless, nominated his cousin William I. Stadtholder of the United
Netherlands as his successor. All the Stadtholders who followed,
including William III., held the title ‘Prince of Orange,’ and in 1688,
during the Irish Revolution, the English Protestant party, under the
leadership of William of Orange, became known as Orangemen. By the
Treaty of Utrecht, made in 1713, Louis XIV. united the principality to
the crown of France, but both the Kings of Prussia and of the
Netherlands have held on tenaciously to the empty title.
THE ROAD TO MONTÉLIMAR
goes out of Orange _past_ the Roman arch--those who drive in the dark
should remember that there is no roadway _through_ it. The River Aigues
is crossed, and then, bearing to the left, the road skirts a hill and
passes through the old town of =Piolenc,= with remains of its ramparts and
a Cluniac priory or château.
At Mornas there is a gateway with a picturesque street inside. Along the
overhanging precipices of rock above the houses stand the ruins of the
castle, built in the twelfth century, and among the broken walls, thrown
down during the religious wars, there is a small chapel and crypt of the
Romanesque period. The Popes of Avignon had a toll on the Rhone at
Mornas, and in the days of religious intolerance it is said that it was
no uncommon thing to see the corpses of Protestants floating down the
river.
Along this portion of the Rhone medieval castles are thickly sown. In
nearly every direction one sees one or two precipitous rocks standing
out conspicuously, their summits crowned with great towers and
crenellated walls in varying states of ruin. One of these is at
Montdragon, standing out boldly on a cliff above the village. It was
founded in the eleventh century by a chieftain who bore the name of
Dragon.
In April the villages are beautified with the delicately subtle blue of
the wistaria. This touch of colour is wanted, for, owing to the dust of
the Rhone Valley, the villages are all toned down to a pale biscuit
colour, and even where a patch of green grass offers a wayfarer
resting-ground one finds on reaching it that the blades of grass grow
thinly from a soil composed of pale whity-brown dust. Every passing
vehicle raises the surface of the road high in the air, and a fast car
is a terror to all it passes.
Lapalud, with a Romanesque church, is typical of the dusty roadside
village, and its _three cassis_ in the road should be watched for
carefully. The level vineyards are intersected with straight lines of
cypresses or poplars, and on the right the hills rise suddenly and
precipitously.
Pierrelatte is a rather poor little town with cobbled streets,
intersected with _three bad cassis_. There is a covered market and a
clock-tower, and on the isolated mass of rock giving its name to the
town are slight ruins of a castle.
As one approaches Donzère the arid hills, whose fronts are broken up
with strange valleys filled with detached masses and spires of rock,
contract the valley to narrow dimensions. The town has kept its old
walls and a machicolated gateway, which makes a pleasing picture when
the wistaria on an adjoining house is in flower. In the town are the
ruins of a château and the interesting church of the abbey, founded in
678. This early church was demolished by the Saracens, but the existing
building goes back to the twelfth century.
The road climbs up among scrubby hills north of Donzère, and before
dropping down to the river level again gives a magnificent view over the
great valley, with a straight white ribbon going across the flat ground
to the town of
MONTÉLIMAR
There are no remains of the Roman town of _Acunum,_ and there is
scarcely anything that is not quite modern in the streets. The chief
relic of the Middle Ages is the château of the great family of Adhemar,
now unfortunately converted into a prison. It contains considerable
remains of a Romanesque chapel dedicated to St. Agatha. The Tour de
Narbonne, standing on higher ground than the other buildings, was added
in the fourteenth century as a second keep. Two gateways of the town
ramparts, one of them rebuilt in recent times, and two good houses
belong to the fifteenth or the following century.
The well-known almond ‘nougat’ of Montélimar is sold in several shops in
the Grand Rue and elsewhere in the town.
North of Montélimar the road runs close to the banks of the Rhone, and
then turns away slightly to Saulce, where there are mosaics and other
remains of the Roman station of _Batiana._ A little to the left of the
road is the old château of Freycinet, from which the well-known
politician obtained his name.
After passing Loriol the road crosses the Drôme and goes through Livron,
an interesting little town, with the ruins of its castle and remains of
its fortifications, besieged in 1574-75 by the rigidly Catholic but
excessively dissolute Henri III. The Protestants of Livron successfully
held out during three assaults, and Henri retired ignominiously.
Just beyond Livron there is _a bad cassis,_ and another occurs at the
next village. The straightness of the road between Livron and Valence no
doubt encourages scorching, and these shallow drains over the road, with
their conspicuous warnings
[Illustration: THE ROMAN ARCH AT ORANGE.
One of the finest outside Rome.]
to motor-drivers, serve their purpose admirably in protecting human life
in the villages. The humanitarian therefore cries ‘Vive le cassis!’
In spring-time the blossom of the peach, apricot, and cherry gives a
pink-and-white blush to the valley, making a strong contrast to the
gaunt rocks on the west side of the river. The mulberry is extensively
grown for the silkworm, and the trees are constantly passed from Orange
northwards.