The Pope's place

Avignon certainly doesn't come to most people's minds when they think about the Catholic church, but for nearly a hundred years this was the home of the pope. Back in 1309 Pope Clement V (a French pope) was elected by the church and decided to move the center of the church to a then small town of Avignon in southern France. Though the building was vacated by the pope around 1417, the vatican remained in possession of the building until the French revolution. In addition to the enormously expensive building, the French popes also built a 3 mile wall surrounding the palace to keep the savages of the day out.

Six hundred years later the savages were fully in control of Avignon which hosts one of the biggest film festivals in the world during July. Ah, we missed that when choosing our home base for exploring Provence. Apparently in 2008, 950 shows/plays were performed in just 3 weeks.

To "advertise" the performances, the city was vandalized with these posters. They were everywhere, and we mean everywhere. Anything within the center city that could in some way have a poster attached to it (building wall, street light, tree, fence, etc) had posters fixed on there. You think this guy was happy about it? The town was jammed and street performers were out in force. While we dined at a cuban place the first night (I ordered the Castro special plate), a group of performers came through the restaurant shouting something about a performance that night. Then they politely handed out flyers. No thanks - but that was some tasty Cuban food.

Since Avignon was our home base due to it's proximity to the smaller towns of Provence that we wanted to see, we didn't feel like doing much sightseeing when we got back at nights. We did enjoy checking the outside of the Popes palace out though and the lively square next to it. With a view looking down at the Rhone River, I can see why the pope chose this spot for his new home. While Avignon was quite the opposite of the quiet Provencal hilltop towns we visited in the days, it was a fun and happening place to be at night. We were at no shortage of diverse people or restaurants to choose from. And while we didn't make any of the performances when we were there, we felt like we saw enough entertainment in the streets to last the whole trip.

Avignon

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