Avignon Audio Tours

Between 1309 and 1377, seven consecutive popes lived in Avignon rather than Rome. They did not come reluctantly. The Palais des Papes, begun in 1316 and completed by 1370, is one of the largest Gothic buildings in Europe and was the most important structure in medieval Christendom for most of that century. Pope Clement VI purchased the town outright from Joanna I of Naples in 1348, the year of the Black Death. The city remained under papal control for four and a half more centuries, until the French Revolution absorbed it in 1791.

The famous bridge, the Pont Saint-Bénézet, was built in the 12th century with 22 arches spanning the Rhone.

Four remain. The song about dancing on it, Sur le Pont d'Avignon, dates to 1853 and describes something that was already impossible to do. Avignon is full of this quality: history so present it becomes strange, the medieval walls (4,330 meters of them, with 39 towers) still enclosing the center like a parenthesis. UNESCO designated the whole ensemble a World Heritage Site in 1995.