Day 22: Avignon en Provence

From the beautiful beaches of Cap D'Agde, we made our way to Avignon in the heart of Provence. Coincidentally, Rene and David, our new neighbors in Costa Rica who are remodeling the house next to ours, still have a place in Avignon, so we spent the night at their home hosted by David.

David showed us some of the city and took us to dinner at Cafe L'Opera near the opera house. We enjoyed getting to know him better. Rene and David will be in Costa Rica full time in October this year.

The lovely opera house in Avignon.

And the children's carousel--lovely at night.

Avignon is a walled medieval city built on a rock overlooking the Rhone River and filled with history. In Italy in the 1200's-1300's, there was an intense power struggle between the Pope and the King of Italy over politics, power, and of course, money. When a Frenchman was elected Pope Clement V by the College of Cardinals in the early 1300's, Italy was a very dangerous place for popes, so Clement decided to return to the safety and protection of the King of France. 

In 1309, Clement V brought the entire Vatican operation to Avignon, and for almost one hundred years, Avignon was the center of Christendom for the entire world. A succession of popes in Avignon fortified the city even further and built a large imposing gothic palace that housed the entire Vatican operation, today called Palais des Papes--Palace of the Popes. With the wealth of the Catholic Church, an entourage of bankers and financiers followed the Pope to Avignon and also built offices and mansions around the Palace. During this time, Avignon flourished and grew, and interestingly, almost the entire population of Avignon at the time spoke Italian.

The Court of Honor where the Pope blessed the masses.

The Great Chapel built by the Popes dwarfed the Cathedral of Avignon--Notre Dame des Doms--right next door. Notre Dame was built 200 years before the Palace of the Popes. Today the Great Chapel houses an art exhibit.

To avoid any hurt feelings among the villagers over the building of the elaborate Popes' Chapel, the Vatican installed an 80 foot gold statue of the Virgin Mary atop Notre Dame des Doms to dress up the church. The tomb of Pope John XXII is located here.

View of the beautiful city of Avignon from the rooftop terrace of the Palace. In 1378, Pope Gregory XI restored the Vatican to Rome, which didn't set well with the French people, and caused the Great Western Schism in the Catholic Church from 1378-1415, during which time there were two Popes--a French one in Avignon and an Italian one in Rome. Interesting to note that after the resolution of the Schism 600 years ago, there has never been another French Pope. Those troublesome Frenchmen can't be trusted!

The other interesting structure near Avignon is the Pont du Gard, 13 miles away. You can see it in this photo also taken from the roof of the Palace of the Popes. The Pont du Gard was built by the Romans in the first century AD and is an elevated section of the aqueduct that brought water over a 30-mile course to the baths, fountains and homes of the Roman settlement at Nimes. Considered an engineering marvel, this aqueduct drops precisely 1 inch every 350 feet over the course of its path, and when fully functional, this structure brought 44 million gallons of water each day to Nimes. Those Romans must have been really clean!