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Back on the main road, the next town is Cavaillon, set on the right bank of the Durance in the flatlands at the foot of the Petit Luberon. It is a thriving commercial centre for the early season fruit and vegetable market, and its name is associated with fragrant, pink melons. The thirteenth-century former cathedral of St Veran is a good example of the Provençal style. A pentagonal external apse is dominated by an octagonal tower. All the side chapels contain paintings and carvings in wood and stone.
Walk along the Grand Rue from the church to reach the Archaeological Museum, housed in the chapel of an old hospital, which has a display of prehistoric finds, a reconstruction of Cavaillon's Roman arch, and a room showing 500 Greek, Gaulish and Roman coins found on Colline St Jacques above the town.
To the south of the museum is a beautifully preserved eighteenth-century synagogue. What were known as the four Holy Communities of Avignon, Carpentras, l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Cavaillon, ensured the protection of Jews from early in the fourteenth century until the French Revolution. Consequential, the Comtat Venaissin came to be known as 'the Jewish paradise', under the direct authority of the Popes and administered by elected chiefs called baylons. Below the synagogue, in the part reserved for making unleaven bread, is a small Judeo-Comtadin museum.
South of the old cathedral the first-century Roman arch in Place du Clos was moved stone by stone in 1880 from the wall of the church in which it had been embedded. Unlike arches commemorating victories, this one, though richly decorated, is conspicuously - one might even say pleasantly - lacking in military motifs.
Finally, in the Durance valley, we go west from Cavaillon to the Chartreuse of Bonpas. A beautiful little chapel is almost all that remains of a thirteenth-century monastery. The village name is interesting. Originally it was malus passus as it represented a possible, but difficult, crossing of the Durance. When the first monks arrived, they built a bridge and the name was changed to Bonpas.
At nearby Chteaurenard, the remains of the hilltop castle are still impressive, and a climb to the top of the remaining tower offers a fine view of the Durance Valley. |
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