Vaison-la-Romaine, Rhone Valley Vacations and Luxury Travel Packages
The D538 south of Nyons enters Vaucluse at Vaison-la-Romaine. A hundred years ago, Baedeker did not mention the place, its fame arising only with the excavation of Roman Vasio in 1907. A patrician city, it was founded as a Roman town (there had been a Ligurian settlement) in the fifth century and retained its position until the Franks destroyed it 400 years later.
The Roman town, excavated as the Quartier du Puymin, includes a fine villa, the House of Messii, which shows how well the senior officers of the Empire lived. Pompey's Portico is an elegant public promenade, while the Nyphaeum, the town's water-source fountain and the elegant theatre give a good impression of why the Romans are considered a civilised race. The site museum houses the best of the excavated finds.
Sadly, in September 1992 the River Ouvèze, swollen by high rainfall, burst its banks and flooded Vaison. Over 30 people were killed and the Roman remains were damaged, though restoration work has limited the permanent damage.
Medieval and Roman Vaison are surrounded by the modern town on the right bank of the River Ouvèze. The one-time cathedral of Notre Dame de Nazareth, which was also damaged in the 1992 flood, dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and gives a good idea of the simple strength of Provençal Romanesque architecture. It stands on the site of a sixth-century church, parts of which are preserved in the structure of the later building.
To reach the Upper Town, which has a maze of old streets and houses, occasional fountains and a seventeenth-century chapel, cross the single-span Roman bridge, miraculously undamaged by the flood, over the Ouvèze. At the heart of the old town is Place du Vieux-Marché with its delightful fountain. Here, on Sunday mornings in summer, a typical Provençal market is held. From the square, the tight, steep Rue des Fours leads up to the ruins of a twelfth-century castle of the Counts of Toulouse, the feudal owners of the town. Sadly, it is ruinous, and is not open to the public.
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