Palais des Papes

Stand in the square for a moment and look up. The pale limestone climbs above you, smooth and almost windowless. In the afternoon sun, the stone turns the colour of warm honey. In the shade it goes cool and grey. Under your feet, the paving runs gently uphill toward the great doorway. Two pointed towers frame the entrance. This is the Palais des Papes, the Palace of the Popes. For a few decades in the fourteenth century, this building on a rock above the Rhône was the centre of the Western Christian world.

How did the papacy end up here, in Provence, so far from Rome? In the early fourteenth century, Rome was a dangerous place. Powerful families fought in its streets, and the popes had close ties with the French crown. In 1309, Pope Clement the Fifth settled in Avignon. He meant it as a temporary stay. Instead, seven popes in a row lived in this city, until 1377. Many Italians of the time saw this period as an exile. The poet Petrarch, who knew Avignon well, criticised the papal court in sharp words.

Here is the first surprise. Clement the Fifth never lived in this palace. It did not yet exist. He stayed in a Dominican convent and moved around the region. The building in front of you came later, under two very different men. The first was Benedict the Twelfth, a former monk with simple tastes. In the 1330s, he began the part now called the Old Palace. It is plain, heavy and defensive, and it looks more like a fortress than a home.

The second builder was Clement the Sixth, and he was nothing like his predecessor. He was a nobleman who loved art, music and good company. One remark often attributed to him is that his predecessors had not known how to be popes. Whatever he really said, his building shows his taste. He added the New Palace, with larger halls, tall pointed windows and rich painted rooms. In only a couple of decades, the two campaigns created one of the largest Gothic buildings of the Middle Ages.

As you walk inside, notice how the Gothic style works here. Gothic is the medieval style of pointed arches and ribbed vaults that let buildings rise tall. In a cathedral, that height pulls the eye toward heaven. Here, it also carries a message of power. Look at the outer walls. Deep arches run up the facade, and between them are openings above the gateway. Defenders could drop stones or other objects through gaps like these. This was a church palace, but it was ready for a siege.

The main courtyard is called the Cour d'Honneur, the Court of Honour. Today it holds something the popes never imagined. In 1947, the actor and director Jean Vilar staged performances here. That event grew into the Festival d'Avignon, one of the most important theatre festivals in the world. Every July, a stage and seating fill this courtyard. The bare stone wall becomes the backdrop. Actors' voices travel up the same walls that once heard cardinals and envoys.

Inside, many rooms are now strikingly empty. That emptiness is part of the story. When the popes left, they took much of the furniture and treasure with them. A papal court was mobile. Beds, tapestries and chests travelled with their owners. So try to fill these spaces in your mind. Picture bright wall hangings, painted ceilings, carpets, the smell of wax candles and wood smoke, and the noise of hundreds of clerks, guards, cooks and visitors.

One of the largest rooms is the Grand Tinel, the great banquet hall. Here the pope dined at a raised table, apart from his guests. Its wooden ceiling was once painted like a night sky, with stars on a blue background. Nearby were huge kitchens. Look for the tall, pyramid-shaped chimney in the kitchen tower. It is open to the sky, and it drew the smoke and heat away from fires that fed a very large court.

Now for the second surprise, and many visitors walk right past it. In the Chamber of the Stag, the pope's private study, the walls are painted with scenes of everyday courtly life. There are hunters, falconers, a fishpond with fishermen, and dense green trees full of birds. There is almost nothing religious in them. These are the private dreams of a fourteenth-century pope. Nearby chapels hold frescoes by the Italian painter Matteo Giovannetti. His work brought Italian painting styles into the heart of France.

The papacy did not end cleanly here. After Gregory the Eleventh returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split. Rival popes were elected, one in Rome and one in Avignon. Historians call this the Great Western Schism. For years, two men claimed the same title. The last Avignon claimant, Benedict the Thirteenth, was besieged inside these walls. In the early fifteenth century he escaped and fled the city. After that, the palace was no longer a papal home, though the city remained papal territory for centuries.

Avignon stayed under papal rule until the French Revolution, when it became part of France. The Revolution was hard on the palace. It served as a prison, and later as army barracks for more than a century. Soldiers divided the high halls into floors and rooms. According to accounts from the period, some of them cut fragments of fresco from the walls and sold them. When you see a blank patch of plaster beside a painted scene, it may be a scar from those years.

Restoration began in the twentieth century, after the army moved out. It continues today, slowly and carefully. In 1995, UNESCO added the historic centre of Avignon to its World Heritage List. That listing includes this palace, the cathedral beside it and the famous broken bridge on the Rhône. From the roof terraces, you can see how they belong together. The red tiled roofs of the old town spread out below, and the river runs wide and green beyond the ramparts.

When you leave, turn left and look at the cathedral of Notre-Dame des Doms. A gilded statue of the Virgin Mary stands on its bell tower, a later addition that catches the light. Behind it, a path climbs to the Rocher des Doms, a park on the rock where the city began. Up there you hear birds, fountains and the wind from the river. It is a quiet place to see the palace from above.

Before you go, stand once more in the square and look back at the facade. Notice the swifts circling the towers, the sound of footsteps on the stone, and the long shadows of the arches. Seven popes walked through that doorway. Soldiers marched through it, and actors still do every summer. The stone is the same. Only the people change... and for a few minutes today, one of those people is you.