May 17, 2002
19. Popes
It was still raining hard when we woke up in Provence, so we decided to continue on to Avignon. We didn't have breakfast at the hotel, so we stopped at the next village to visit a café. By this time, I had switched from the morning café court to café au lait. The former is tiny and strong like espresso, and the latter is the same thing diluted threefold in hot milk. I really enjoy the strong coffee, but it's more peaceful to take a larger and slower coffee in the morning. From what I've observed, this is a common sentiment.
The drive to Avignon was uneventful except for a little detour within Aix-en-Provence. We were trying to find the freeway route, but all the directions pointed towards the non-toll roads. Many of the larger roads in France are péage, or toll roads. All of the entrances have booths where you pick up a ticket, and you pay (either cash or VISA) on exit. Since we had already explored some of the back country, we tried to take the freeways where possible. The average toll for our short hops on the freeway (at 130km per hour) was 4€.
The center of Avignon is the walled medieval city, once again with twisty streets that aren't well suited to automobiles and parking. During the fourteenth century, the Papacy was moved from Italy to France for political reasons, and the city was well-fortified with the wealth of the Catholic church. This has left an incredible historical legacy, including a curious exception in the French language -- you generally use à to refer to a city as a location and en to refer to a country. Thus, you would say J'habite à Paris or J'habite à Orléans or J'habite en France. The only exception is Avignon, which enjoys a special status -- J'habite en Avignon.
The office de tourisme in Avignon doesn't handle hotel reservations as in Nice, but it had a bulletin board listing all the hotels and their vacancies. In general, the hotels don't advertise their vacancies with neon signs; you have to go in to ask. Since it was a long weekend, many of the hotels were fully booked. The next two hotels were listed at the tourist office as having vacancies at noon -- once we arrived to check at one o'clock, they were full. It actually wasn't difficult to find a hotel, but it takes some time. We eventually found a place at the (Hôtel Mignon, a one star establishment (at 58€ a night). You can see our room (six) on the web site.
Our first destination was the Palais de Papes, which is a colossal structure in the middle of the city, and where the Popes lived during their stay in Avignon. The entry price was pretty steep (11€ including a pass to the bridge), and the tour was conducted by those little electronic audio devices. You enter the room number and it burbles into your ear in a cheerful English accent.
I discovered an interesting fact about these devices -- there isn't a tape, so if you fast forward or rewind, it electronically cues the dialog to the appropriate position. The designers play a fake sound clip during fast forward and rewind to mimic the squeaking and popping of the human voice at high speed.
The Palais de Papes (as my little hitchhiker's guide informed me) was constructed in two parts -- the old palace and the new palace. Over a hundred years, seven popes and two anti-popes lived in the palace. What's an anti-Pope? Having the Pope in France brought a lot of political power to the region and strongly favoured the French in the Papal court. A schism developed when the decision was made to relocate back to Italy, and a Pope was elected on each side. The two Popes took turns excommunicating each other and their followers for a generation until the schism was resolved in favour of the Papacy in Italy. If things had turned out differently, today Rome would be in the south of France.
I was very impressed by the sense of history and immensity in the palace, especially in the grand chapel and some of the other large rooms. When the palace was occupied by the popes, it would have been full of people, and sumptuously appointed with tapestries lining the walls and dividing the rooms Unfortunately, the legacy of the French Revolution scattered most of the furnishings and destroyed much of the statues and frescoes. One of the smaller chapels with frescoes is closed entirely, and the other is badly defaced. Much of the stonework on the door to the grand chapel was lost when the room was re-engineered as a barracks. The bedchambers of the Pope survived surprisingly well. Some of the ceiling and floor has been restored, but the swirling red vine pattern on the navy blue wall is mostly original. You can find pictures of the damaged chapels here.
The next stop was the famous Pont de St. Bénezet. As a young shepherd, an angel appeared to the saint, and indicated the spot where he should build a bridge across the Rhône. Nobody believed him, as he tried to explain where and why the bridge should be built, until he miraculously lifted a huge paving stone and carried it on his shoulder. He obtained permission and funds to build the bridge and worked on it from the years of 1177 to his death in 1184. He was buried in a chapel that was built into the bridge, until the seventeenth century when his remains were removed to prevent damage from the river.
There's a famous song that describes dancing sur le pont d'Avignon. In fact, the bridge is quite narrow for foot and horse traffic, and it would be impossible to perform the dance to the song on the bridge. The original song described dancing sous (under) the bridge on one of the islands it crosses. Today, you can walk across the bridge as far as it goes, and visit the chapels that have been built into it. Our admission was included with our ticket to the Palais de Papes.
The city was bustling that day. There was a wine festival (you could see tasters walking around with special wine glasses attached to a string around their neck), and a gospel music show. We heard a sample when we were on the roof of the Palais des Papes, but we missed the show because we decided to head to the sister city of Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon. It was too late to go inside the main sites: the Fort St. André and the Chartreuse (charterhouse, or monastary). We walked around the outside, because we didn't think we'd have time to come back to them... (a little bit of foreshadowing there).
We ate dinner at a couscousserie in the main square of the old city. We each ordered the menu (18€ per person) and swapped half the entrée and the main plates, so we pretty much had a bit of everything. I had coffee at the end of the meal, because I forgot one of the main pleasures of eating couscous -- the thé à la menthe at the end.
The next day we were going to travel to Nîmes, the city with an accent, because we were tired of this new-fangled 14th century architecture and we wanted to look at some really old buildings. Our time in Nîmes was cut a little short because we made two stops beforehand.
The Musée du Petit Palais is immediately beside the Palais des Papes, and has been extensively restored to house 13th and 14th century italian religious artwork. It was a sunny morning, so I was a bit suspicious that it would be a bit tedious to stay indoors. However, the admission price was right (2€) so we could glance around and head on our way.
Instead, the museum captivated us for a couple of hours. The museum was largely based on a famous collection from a fellow named Giampietro Campana, who was an avid collector. He had such a passion for the art he collected that he committed several types of fraud and misuse of public funds in order to acquire over fifteen thousand pieces. It was only an appeal by Napoléon III, who negociated the purchase of his collection for France, that saved him from a twenty year prison sentence.
Overall, the eighteen rooms had pretty much the same things over and over -- the saints, the Madonna and child, the Annunciation, the crowning of the Virgin, the history of Christ. You learn fairly quickly to recognize the saints -- Saint Jean has the fur-lined shirt under his robes, Saint Pierre has the keys to heaven, Saint Jerome has the red hat and heals the lion, Saint Catherine is near the wheel, Saint Francois has stigmata, and so forth. The detail and effort that went into these works, and the changes in the styles and even body shapes over the centuries was fascinating. The big name was a single Botticelli Madonna of Humility, which I had to go back to find.
You'll notice that I have frame captures of nearly all the museums I went to see during the trip. In general, you aren't permitted to use flash photography, but taking photos is permitted. The only exception I encountered was the Musée Matisse in Nice.
The other stop before Nîmes was the Pont de Gard aqueduct. This was build over 2000 years ago by the Romans, and was used for nearly 500 years to supply fresh and pure spring water to Nîmes and the towns in between. It's 40 metres high, and 275 metres long. It was partially restored in the mid-1800's by order of Napoléon III.
There is a small controversy surrounding this aqueduct and the 5 euro note. The countries can put whatever they please on the euro coins, but all of the euro bills are the same. Instead of putting any national monuments on the bills, the designers use the symbols of fictional windows and fictional bridges. Unfortunately for the rest of Europe, the "bridge" on the 5 euro note resembles the Pont de Gare aqueduct, which gives France nearly three extra bonus points.
There is no admission fee to the aqueduct, but there is a museum, which we didn't visit. You used to be able to walk over the aqueduct, either in the channel itself or on the flagstones. Apparently this is now "understandingly" forbidden, since there are no handrails to prevent you from falling off.
Nîmes itself is dominated by a Roman amphitheatre of the same period. An amphitheatre (or arène) is the oval-shaped stadium built to offer fighting sports to the public -- animal against animal, animal against man or man against man. Apparently there was a famous movie a couple of years ago that featured these games. The tour guide was careful to point out several inaccuracies: the combats were seldom to the death (except on special occasions), the gladiators were always volunteers and carefully trained, and exotic animals (notably lions) were only used in Rome.
The amphitheatre was divided into several sections and citizens sat according to their social status. The boxes along the broad edge of the oval were reserved for the upper classes and politians, who sponsored the spectacle for the amusement of the masses. The games were free, so access to the amphitheatre was unrestricted, and a full audience of 24,000 could vacate in five minutes through the vomitoria. Contrary to popular belief, the Roman vomitorium had nothing to do with the biological function -- it was used in the sense of expulsion or emptying.
In the hundreds of years when the amphitheatre wasn't used, a village of 750 inhabitants established itself inside. Napoléon III once again showed his historical foresight in clearing out these buildings and restoring the amphitheatre as a site. The 64 arches around the amphitheatre are now closed in by a chain link fence, because the inside has been renovated so it can be used for open air concerts. In the winter, a giant lens-shaped balloon is attached as a roof to the structure so it can be used year round. They had just removed the boule, so we were only permitted to take the guided tour.
The next stop in Nîmes was the maison carrée, which is a 2000 year old temple to the Imperial Cult -- the religious belief that the emperors of Rome would become deities in the afterlife. The amphitheatre and the temple are two of the best preserved Roman ruins in France. The upper galleries of the amphitheatre are intact, as is most of the stonework and the roof of the temple. Other than a few other ruins, the entire Roman city has disappeared.
We visited the garden of fountains, and noticed a remarkable number of brides and photographers (and presumably grooms as well). The garden is quite beautiful, with some Roman ruins of unknown origins (called The Temple of Diana, which has a multilingual sign warning us that "escalation is forbidden"), some canals and gardens, and quite a bit of statuary. Climbing the broad staircases to the top of the only hill in Nîmes, we found the Tour Magnes, which used to be part of the city walls.
We ended the day by returning to Avignon, and eating at a Vietnamese restaurant in the old city (ordering à la carte, 45€ for two people).
The next day, I left my bag at the hotel, and John drove me to the gare so I could find my way back to Paris. I was going to find a train that suited me, buy a ticket and poke around Avignon for a bit, getting back to Paris in plenty of time for supper. I waved John on ahead to return the car to Nice -- by this time, I was a seasoned voyager, and I wouldn't have any trouble...
It was ten o'clock in the morning, and there were several trains going to Paris. Unfortunately, they were all full. In fact, most of the trains the next day were also full. Seeing as it was the end of a long weekend, I probably should have made a reservation. So for the next two hours, I applied my problem-solving abilities to find a bus (none available), a flight (all booked) or even another rental car for a six hour drive (none available). I was supposed to be at work the next morning, but it wasn't looking very likely. So I bought my ticket home (70€), emailed my manager (4&euro per hour), booked another night at the Hôtel Mignon (41€ including breakfast) and went to some other museums.
The Musée Lapidaire was full of statues and statue fragments. It wasn't too impressive, but it was nice and cool inside, and the admission couldn't be beat (1€). There were some interesting biblical scenes carved from the 14th century, and quite a few tombs. As well, there were many well-preserved egyptian artifacts.
The Musée Calvert (2€), on the other hand, was excellent. The museum collection is largely made of donations of private collections, so there were a lot of work done by families and painters from the city in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. There was also a significant amount of statuary, a room deidicated to eighteenth century silver, and another gallery of thoroughly enjoyable, more modern paintings. The Big Names weren't there in force, except for an unimpressive Gericault and a single disinteresting Manet. However, even with nearly complete ignorance of the artists beforehand (and they might have been Big Names for all I know), I felt as if I had the opportunity to get to know them. There were many portraits of the artists, which was an interesting touch. I particularly enjoyed a large canvas of a Vernet (I forget which one) strapped to the mast of a boat during a fierce storm, so he could study the light while the rest of the passengers cowered. I also found the paintings of Avignon done in the eighteenth century to be very interesting.
I had supper by myself at Les Artistes, where I ordered the 14€ menu, which included a hot goat cheese on toast with salad as an entrée, a ham in mushroom sauce for the main plate, and a little chocolate cake in custard for dessert. With the aperitif (kir), a quarter bottle of red table wine (no need to be fancy by myself) and a coffee to follow, the bill came to 22€.
I got up early the next day and took the city bus to Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon This is where all of the cardinals built their livrées (mansions). My first stop was the Chatreuse du Val de Bénédiction This used to be the mansion of a Cardinal who became Pope Innocent IV after the General of the Carthusian Order refused the papacy out of humility. To honor this act, the new Pope had his own mansion converted into one of the largest charterhouses in France.
I would highly recommend seeing the charterhouse. The site is more interesting than grandiose, although the tour starts with the largest building, the chapel. One end has fallen and there's an excellent view of the towers of the Fort (a poet's dream -- the apse has collapsed). The self-guided tour has information sheets in multiple languages, with plenty of interesting and historically satisfying information.
One of the things I learned was that many of the large buildings in the fourteenth century were built by "jobbing workers". That is, the stonemasons were payed by the work they performed -- specifically the number of stones they placed. In the chapel, in several places in the Palais des Papes and in the towers of the Fort, there is an identifying mark in the middle of each stone.
The Fort St. André unfortunately closed for lunch as I arrived, so I walked around the village of Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon and had a sandwich and beer for lunch (6€). I visited one of the old churches in the region, and rescued it from certain destruction in flames when I pointed out that one of the prayer candles had fallen over. There were also plenty of relics -- which specifically means extremely old body parts of saints displayed in ornate golden cases.
The fort, unfortunately, was pretty dull. The tour was through the two towers, and then kind of rambling through the village inside, on trails that didn't seem to go anywhere or to unmarked buildings. The best part of the Fort was supposed to be the gardens of the Abbey, which were unfortunately closed on Monday.
I went back to Avignon to visit the last museum that I wanted to see, the Fondation Angladon, which had a modern collection with paintings by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, Modigliani. It was closed, so I went to visit another church -- again very impressive. I thought the church in Villeneuve had a lot of saints (there was a wall of twenty relic containers) until I saw that this church had some samplers -- fifty tiny saint bits neatly labeled in a single cabinet.
Speaking of samplers, I visited a chocolaterie and tasted one of the traditional bonbons from Provence -- the calisson. It is lozenge-shaped (diamond) with rounded edges, and is made from almonds and preserved fruit, finely ground and mixed, with white frosting. You should always have a calisson with you while travelling in the south -- if a museum or monument turns out to be disappointing, you can eat it and feel a bit better.
I took the TGV home that night from the Avignon train terminal, which is about a 10 minute navette (shuttle bus) ride from the old city. The ticket agent had told me that there was only one seat left on the train, and it was in the smoking car. However, I encountered another couple who had been told the same thing -- I think it's a plot by the tobacco companies. Never, never, never take the smoking car. If you smoke, go to the smoking car for a visit, but DO NOT stay there for the whole trip. It was significantly worse than the worst bingo hall or pub.
