A Day In Les Baux

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Wednesday we headed off to Les Baux. This was a beautiful town with a Castle and ruins that were definately worth visiting. Zdena's sister Eva wrote a great article about Les Baux for the Prague Post that I thought I would include here, with the writer's permission!

Nest of Eagles - Lair of Wolves

(Eva Munk for The Prague Post, November 14, 1996)

The Alpilles jut out of the fertile Provencal plain like a skeleton's fist out of a flowerbed.

The stark massif seems to offer nothing but huge, misshapen rocks, perched like gargoyles atop looming cliffs, ready to launch themselves into the arms of the Mistral. Howling like a demented animal, this cold, dry wind from the north is an eternal companion of these barren hills. Nothing grows here but golden broom and stubborn (but oh so fragrant) clumps of thyme and rosemary, clinging to cracks in the rock.

Bravely, the two-lane road from St. Remy leads me through this desolate tract. Suddenly, as if some giant had smashed it in two, the hill splits into a lush canyon. Fragrant with olive trees and honey, and hidden like a pearl in rough grey oyster shell, it is called Le Val d'Enfer -- The Valley of Hell.

Perched on the opposite canyon wall is the town of Les Baux.

From far away, it looks like a warped grid of narrow cobbled streets someone pitched against the slope. Closer up, it is a town of low Renaissance lintels chiseled into the gray-gold living rock. Blood-red roses pour over garden walls into tiny squares, joined by flights of stone steps that always seem to lead up.

The ruin of a mighty castle towers above to remind me that the real purpose of all this preciousness was once defense.

A thousand years ago, when Saracens were marauding on the plains below, a family of knights descended from King Balthazar himself, came to the Valley of Hell. Into the crags above the wind-tortured plateau of Les Baux ("the heights") they carved their "Eagles' Nest."

Commoners flocked here for safety and soon it became was a bustling town. To relieve the harshness of the place, the lords of the town became great patrons of the arts. Troubadours stopped there on the way to the papal court in Avignon, and the town blossomed into a center of chivalry on a par with Paris and Carcassonne.

But beneath this veneer of culture, the lords of Les Baux were cruel, capturing traveling merchants for ransom and push them over the edge of the cliffs if it was not forthcoming. In time, the eagles' nest came to be known as The Lair of the Wolves.

Its masters grew so proud that they rebelled against King Louis XIII, who razed the citadel after only a 30-day siege in 1631. As punishment, he made its citizens dismantle the magnificent castle stone by stone.

For the next three centuries, Les Baux crumbled. Lured by the easy life of the plain, its inhabitants trickled away, and by the end of the 19th century, it was an empty shell. But in the 1950's, the French government decided to bring this dead town back to life. Volunteers propped up the crumbling walls and turned the tiny old houses into cafes and shops.

Today the lower town is a bustling tourist attraction. The upper town, however, is as it has been for 350 years - an eerie place of windows without rooms and staircases leading to nothing.

Of the citadel and the proud lords that built it, little remains: the skeleton of a Gothic arch, a dovecote carved into the mountain, an intricate filigree of channels dug into stark walls by the fingers of the wind.

Only the donjon, towering over the Provencal plain, retains its shape.

Lured by the view, I climb the staircase, polished slick by centuries of footsteps. The wind has become a screaming, physical force that threatens to hurl me over the edge. Feeling like an interloper, I think of the masters of this place - and their victims.

Then I step out into the sun, and a view of Provence all the way to the coast is my reward.

The lords of Les Baux are gone, and their proud city lies open to throngs of tourists. Only the wind that cascades over the parapets and roars down the old streets like a phantom river can whisper the splendor of it now.

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Photos

Les Baux
Street scene of our group exploring Les Baux

Bruce
Bruce leading the way toward the ruins...

Zdena
Amongst the ruins in Les Baux

Paul & Zdena
Great views from the top.

West
Surveying his domain

Happy Hour
Resting after a long day of sightseeing

Comments

[kristin]

wow!
Wonderful pictures! And the article is so well written... :)