...on y danse, on y danse.

I woke up around 9:30 (which is amazing considering I was up watching TV [I can watch TV at this hotel!] until 3:00 and I have no alarm) and headed out into the city. I decided not to bring my coat, since it was a beautiful, sunny morning. I forgot to account for Le mistral, which is what the locals in Provence call the daily winds that blow down off of the Alps and into the Rhône valley. Today’s winds were pretty mild considering what le mistral could be. It is quite common to have 70mph gusts of freezing, icy winds. So anyway, I froze for the first half of the day. But besides that, this city is fantastic. It was so busy today that I forgot it was Sunday. If I ever decide to live in France, it will be in this city.

 I headed to the palais des papes, which is exactly what it sounds like. We’re about to head into history territory here, so bear with me. In 1305, the civil war in Rome between the Guelphs and the Gibellines resulted in the election of a French pope, who was called Clement V. Given the whole civil war thing going on in Italy, Clement started looking for a non-civil war ridden locale to move his curia to.

 In 1307, the king of France, Philip le Bel (a real bastard, as you’ll soon find out) arrested all of the Knights Templar in France. Since Clement was fond of the Templars (they did answer to the Pope after all), he decided to intervene and was finally forced to move to Avignon. At the time, Avignon wasn’t part of France, as Provence was pretty independent. The Papacy would end up staying in Avignon until 1417 in what is referred to as the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.” It would later be called “The Great Schism” when those naughty Italians elected their own extra pope, and the Germans, not to be outdone, followed suit and elected a third pope.

 So anyway, with so many new residents in Avignon (the Pope had his massive entourage which needed to live with him, and most of his entourage had their own entourages as well), Clement’s successors began the construction of a papal palace/fortress. Construction started in 1338 (just after those pesky French got distracted by the Hundred Years’ War), and continued being built by successive popes over the next twenty years.

 When you think about it, the speed at which the complex grew is mind-boggling. It’s bigger than most cathedrals and castles, which often took somewhere in the range of 50 to sixty years to complete. The palace is actually the largest gothic palace in the world, and it is pretty amazing.

Also, aside from the Hundred Years’ War causing construction problems, Avignon also suffered from a pesky little illness called the Black Death during the construction. Which reminds me of an entertaining anecdote: during the middle ages leading up to the Black Death, Avignon was so overcrowded and polluted that there were at least a dozen streets named after merde, which is the French word for “shit.”

So then I headed off to church. Notre Dame-des-Doms is a small church, but it packs a punch. It’s very colorful inside with a ton of sculptures and other great things to look at. But like I said, it’s small, and I don’t know much about it, so we’ll move on.

I headed back to my hotel room for a brief respite and to retrieve my jacket before walking to the next town over. I crossed over the Rhône in search of the Philip le Bel tower. And here’s the story of that: Avignon has this great bridge, called the St. Bezenet Bridge (most just call it the Pont d’Avignon). It was built across the widest part of the Rhône  river in the first decade of the 1200s, and then was promptly destroyed in the 1220s during the Albigensian crusade.

 The bridge was rebuilt, but it was periodically destroyed by flooding on the river. It kept getting rebuilt until the 1700s, when the people of Avignon finally said “screw this” and left it in its half-destroyed state. But before that, it was an important crossing on one of the largest rivers in Europe. And as I’ve said, Philip “the Fair” was kind of a douchebag. Not content with having control of the land across the river from Avignon, he built this tower in order to control the bridge itself.

 The eastern bank of the Rhône River marked the boundary of France, so Philip did everything he could to gain more and more influence in the city. When the river flooded and submerged large parts of the city, Philip even collected taxes from the people whose homes were destroyed, as his reign was extended “into the city.” This tower, easily visible from the Pope’s palace, was a stark reminder of the French intention to control the city.

 Beyond the tower is a fortress built at around the same time that I had never heard of until today. Everyone knows about the Philip le Bel tower, but a castle is out there too? Jeez. Who knew? The problem? It was a hell of a walk up and down several large hills to get there, and I got there with little time to spare before closing time. From the outside, the castle is magnificent, perched atop a small mountain, controlling the Rhône valley for miles around, and built very tall and very robustly.

 From the inside, it wasn’t so impressive. It’s apparently only the southern side that is built so stout (the other sides give way to pretty sheer cliff faces, so bigger walls weren’t as necessary), and much of it is in ruins.

 That front wall and its towers provided ample entertainment, though. Within many of the rooms are obvious signs of medieval life: a small watch-house with a tiny fireplace, latrines hidden away in side rooms, and medieval graffiti on the floors (including the medieval equivalent of tic-tac-toe).

 Finally, I walked back into Avignon and got some dinner before heading back to the hotel to Skype with Mom and my sister. That’s when a great day turned sour. My grandmother died last night, which as you can imagine, really sucks. But honestly, I’ve been preparing myself for it for years at this point, so it didn’t hit me too hard.  She had kept enough of her mind intact to realize that she had lost most of it to Alzheimer’s, and she was pretty miserable about it. So I like to believe she’s in a better place, or failing that at least that she’s at peace. Rest in peace, Grandma, you deserve it. And everyone else, hang in there. I’ll be home soon, I promise.