Avignon

The city began on the Rocher des Doms, a limestone outcrop above the Rhône, and Greek writers knew it as a town of the region of Massalia, today's Marseille. It was long the capital of the Cavares, a Gaulish people who became Roman with the arrival of the legions around 120 BC; as Avennio it later became a Roman colony. In the Middle Ages it passed to the Holy Roman Empire in 1032, and in 1226, after siding with the Count of Toulouse in the Albigensian Crusade, it surrendered to Louis VIII after a three-month siege and had to pull down its walls. The first bridge, built between 1177 and 1185, was destroyed in the same siege.

In 1309 Pope Clement V settled here, and seven successive popes lived in Avignon until Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. Pope John XXII, elected in 1316, turned the old bishop's palace into the papal residence, and in 1348 Clement VI bought the town from Joanna I of Naples for 80,000 florins — the same year the Black Death killed almost two-thirds of its people. New walls followed from 1357. After 1378 the Western Schism brought rival popes back to Avignon, until the last of them was expelled from the city in 1403.

The city stayed a papal possession, ruled by legates and vice-legates, until the National Constituent Assembly voted to annex it to France in September 1791; in 1793 it became the capital of the new Vaucluse department. The railway to Marseille arrived in 1847, and the town spread far outside its walls in the 20th century. The first festival was held in 1947, the historic centre became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, and the TGV arrived in 2001.

The papal past is everywhere — the city calls itself the Cité des Papes, and 177 of its sites and buildings are listed historical monuments, from the palace to the chapels of its penitent brotherhoods. It is also known around the world through a children's song, Sur le pont d'Avignon, popularised by Adolphe Adam's comic opera of 1853, although the bridge itself is far too narrow for dancing. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, by contrast, has nothing to do with the city: it takes its name from a street in Barcelona.

The Festival d'Avignon, founded by Jean Vilar in 1947, is the oldest festival in France and one of the world's largest for the performing arts. For three weeks each July the official "In" stages theatre, dance and music in the courtyard of the palace and other historic sites, while the more bohemian "Off" fills the town's small theatres and halls with many more shows. Every summer about 100,000 people attend the festival.

Provençal is still part of the identity: the city is Avinhon in Provençal. The mistral is a constant topic, so much so that a medieval proverb called the city windy when it was not plague-ridden. Rugby league has a following, and Sporting Olympique Avignon is the local club.

The commune had a population of about 92,000 in 2023, of whom about 16,000 live inside the walls, and the Grand Avignon agglomeration, which crosses the Rhône into the Gard, about 200,000. As prefecture of the Vaucluse it is an administrative centre, and its university, created in 1984, occupies the 18th-century buildings of the former Sainte-Marthe hospital.

Tourism is a pillar of the economy, with about four million visitors coming to the city and its surroundings each year. The urban area also has some of the largest retail space in Europe for its size, centred on the Avignon Nord commercial zone, and a national-importance wholesale market built on the early fruit and vegetables of the Vaucluse. International tomato industry organisations and the Inter-Rhône wine body have their headquarters here.

Most residents live outside the walls, in districts that grew in the 20th century, when the population almost doubled between 1920 and 1975. Some southern districts between the walls and the Durance, such as Monclar and Saint-Chamand, lie in a sensitive urban zone where businesses that move in receive tax exemptions. Inside the walls daily life runs at its own pace — the morning market at Les Halles, coffee in the side squares — until July, when the festival takes over the whole town.

Avignon's cooking belongs to the Mediterranean tradition, built on olive oil, onion softened in it and a wide range of herbs. The city's own speciality is the papaline, a small chocolate made of two thin layers of chocolate holding a liqueur of Comtat oregano, named after the popes but created only in 1960; the recipe for the oregano liqueur itself dates from 1870. The Vaucluse around the city is a great producer of early fruit and vegetables, and the city is the seat of international tomato industry organisations.

Les Halles on Place Pie is the place to see the local produce — fresh produce, cheeses and wines, as well as fresh fish and meat — and it offers cooking classes on Saturday mornings. The squares away from the palace hold the restaurants used by residents.

Wine is the great local product. The southern Rhône valley around Avignon is a major wine-growing region, and its most famous name is Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the village 12 km north where Pope John XXII built a castle; almost all its farmland is under vines, and it is best known for its red wines, though some whites are made too.