OCTOBER 2023 · ESCAPE
Avignon, France
Vaucluse, Provence
The Palais des Papes is the thing people come for. It's the reason Avignon is on the itinerary, the reason for the queues at the ticket office and the coach parks outside the walls. I walked past it and into the streets behind it, looking for what the city accumulates on its surfaces when no one is maintaining it for tourism.
Medieval stone holds shadow in October at a particular angle. The streets are narrow enough that direct sun arrives in short windows, then goes. The light when it lands is hard and Mediterranean — not soft northern European light but something that bleaches colour out of pale stone and deepens everything else. A terracotta saint mounted on a pale facade between two shuttered windows: the warmth of the ceramic against the bone-coloured stone, with both in direct sun, is a different proposition than the same scene in diffuse cloud.
The light when it lands is hard and Mediterranean — not soft northern European light but something that bleaches colour out of pale stone and deepens everything else.
Avignon — October 2023
The shutters are the consistent detail. Blue, dark green, faded ochre — every building on every street has them, and they're always slightly different. The stones they're mounted on have centuries of weather in them. Power lines cross above, which maps the 20th century onto the medieval layout. Nobody has tidied the power lines away.
I was looking at the patina of the place rather than its monuments. A courtyard framed between two buildings, bright at the far end and dark in the archway. A stone wall with two windows and a surface so textured it reads as almost geological. The Hotel Europa sign in a cobbled square, with bollards and pedestrians and a scale of ordinariness that the city permits alongside its UNESCO designation.
One wall had mounted artworks on it — brackets, frames, the work itself — and the shadow they cast fell across existing weathering. Accumulation on accumulation.
Medieval stone street in Avignon with people walking, tall weathered buildings flanking narrow passage
Sun-lit narrow courtyard between weathered stone buildings, bright light contrasting dark archway
Orange terracotta statue mounted on pale stone facade between shuttered windows, bright sunlight
Stone courtyard facade with symmetrical blue shutters and symmetrical windows, people below
Weathered beige stone building wall with multiple shuttered windows and power lines, textured facade
Close-up of weathered stone wall with two shuttered windows, aged patina and texture
Stone wall with mounted artworks and weathered surface detail, dramatic light casting shadows
Classical European building facade with ornate carved details and wrought iron balcony, storefront below
Avignon courtyard with Hotel Europa sign, stone buildings, bollards, and pedestrians in sunlight