Provence in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Provence covers 12 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Provence rewards a detour.

Day 1

Morning

1. Les Baux-de-Provence: A dramatic cliffside village perched on a rocky outcrop above the Alpilles, crowned by ruined medieval fortifications and home to the spectacular Carrières de Lumières immersive art show.
2. Avignon: The "City of Popes," where the papacy resided for 68 years in the 14th century, a walled medieval city on the Rhône with the world's largest Gothic palace and a world-famous bridge.
3. Palais des Papes: The world's largest Gothic palace, built between 1335 and 1352 as the seat of the Avignon Papacy, covering 15,000 square metres across two vast interconnected buildings.

Afternoon

1. Arles: A Roman city where Van Gogh painted over 200 masterpieces, still dominated by a 1st-century amphitheatre seating 21,000 that is used for bullfights today, and by the ancient Roman necropolis of Les Alyscamps.
2. Gordes: Regularly voted "one of the most beautiful villages in France," Gordes perches on a dramatic limestone cliff in the Luberon with its medieval château, dry-stone Village des Bories, and lavender festival.
3. Roussillon: A village of 17 shades of ochre, perched above the extraordinary Colorado Provençal, the largest ochre quarry in the world, where the cliffs and houses glow in every shade from pale yellow to deep blood-red.

Day 2

Morning

1. Abbaye de Sénanque: A 12th-century Cistercian abbey still inhabited by monks, surrounded by lavender fields in a remote Luberon valley, the most photographed combination of architecture and landscape in Provence.
2. Mont Ventoux: The "Giant of Provence", a 1,912-metre isolated mountain whose bare white limestone summit is visible for 100 kilometres, famous as the most challenging climb in the Tour de France and offering views from the Alps to the Mediterranean.
3. Luberon (Bonnieux & Ménerbes): The Luberon massif and its hilltop villages, immortalised by Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence", offer lavender fields, cedar forests, medieval villages, and the wild landscapes of the Luberon Regional Natural Park.

Afternoon

1. Fontaine-de-Vaucluse: France's most powerful natural spring, where the Sorgue river emerges from a mysterious underground network at the base of a towering cliff, a place of extraordinary natural drama and the retreat of the Renaissance poet Petrarch.
2. Pont du Gard: A UNESCO World Heritage Roman aqueduct bridge built around 19 BC, standing 49 metres high and carrying water 50 kilometres from Uzès to Nîmes for over 400 years, the best-preserved Roman structure in France.
3. Lavender Fields of Valensole: The Plateau de Valensole is Provence's most spectacular lavender landscape, vast fields of purple lavender stretching to the horizon from June to July, interspersed with almond trees and beehives, producing some of France's finest lavender essential oil and honey.

Full Provence guide and all stops →