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Sisteron, Provence Vacations and Luxury Travel Packages
Sisteron is a theatrical gateway into Provence. The harsh Dauphiné Mountains are to the north, while to the south the valley opens onto richer, warmer land. At the town, the Durance has barged its narrow way through buckled, striated mountains. This weathering process was aided by the last Ice Age because the glaciers of the Alps never reached further than Sisteron, though their melting debris, tons of sharp angular rocks, helped carve the gorge.
The town is cleverly set where the Durance joins a lesser stream, the Buech, and is built into the rocks on the west side of the gorge facing the towering Rocher de la Baum. This is a vast natural protection to approaches from the east, its town-side face composed, it seems, of candles of rock, so intense has been the geological folding in the area.
Today the town is bypassed by the road, the main route on into Provence being taken under the Rocher by tunnel. This has left the town more peaceful than it used to be, giving the visitor time and space to breathe.
Near the Place de la République are the town hall, church, and the four remaining fifteenth-century towers whose ramparts have all but disappeared. The Museum of Old Sisteron is also close by, its archaeological items were discovered during reconstruction work after the bombing raids.
The full name of the one-time cathedral is Notre Dame-des-Pommiers, a strange looking name, and one that has nothing to do with apples, but is a corruption of pomerium, an area which must be left free. Its architecture reflects Sisteron's geographical position; both Lombard and Alpine influences show in the octagonal tower and its external gallery. The perfect alignment of the masonry is characteristically Provençal.
A warren of narrow streets, stepped and vaulted (andrônes), and linking tiny squares, make up the old quarters. Where the main street enters a tunnel there is a bust of Paul Arène (1843-96), a Sisteron writer of lightness and charm who, under a pseudonym, wrote the famous Lettres de Mon Moulin with Alphonse Daudet in 1866. In Rue Saunerie, at No 20, Napoleon took lunch on 5 March 1815 on the route - now known as Route Napoleon - that lead from Elba to Waterloo.
The Citadel of massive ancient fortifications, started in the eleventh century and added to later, stands supreme above the town. The initial climb to the site can be avoided by taking the little electric tourist train, which also runs around the best of the old town. A curtain wall on a narrow ridge and supported by high arches leads to the Citadel which is reached by a steep climb (for which no help is available), with a panorama at the top whose items are identified by a viewing table. The final climb, up a steep staircase, reaches the Devil's Tower, the descent from which includes an underground staircase.
Both Citadel and rock are floodlit on summer evenings, when broadcasts in French explain Sisteron?s history. In the guardroom at the entrance, there is a museum of local wartime resistance.
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