Historic Centre of Avignon

On the Rocher des Doms above the Rhône stands the cathedral of Notre-Dame des Doms, dating from 1150, and between 1171 and 1185 a bridge some 900 metres long was built across the river. It was wrecked in 1226 during the siege of Avignon by Louis VIII. In 1309 the Gascon pope Clement V, unwilling to face the chaos of Rome, moved the papal Curia to Avignon and lived as a guest of the Dominican monastery.

The austere Benedict XII had the bishops' palace pulled down and Pierre Poisson built a heavily fortified Old Palace around a cloister in its place. His successor Clement VI commissioned Jean de Louvres to build the New Palace, with a Great Chapel 52 metres long. Frescoes by Matteo Giovannetti and others decorated the rooms, and in 1348 Clement VI bought the town itself from Joanna I of Naples. The papal library of more than 2,000 volumes drew scholars, Petrarch among them.

The popes returned to Rome in 1377, but in the schism that followed the antipopes Clement VII and Benedict XIII lived in Avignon until 1403. The city remained under papal rule until 1791, when it became part of France during the Revolution. Floods brought down the bridge again and again, and it was abandoned in 1669; four of its 22 arches remain. The historic centre with the palace, the episcopal buildings and the bridge was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1995.