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Photo: jlggb (Jean-Louis Boissier), CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Avignon is famous the world over for its annual theatre festival. For three or four weeks in July the city is virtually swollen with street performers, actors, musicians, and of course the ubiquitous tourists. The festival is an excuse to turn any room with enough seating into a 'salle de spectacle' and the city is host to a wide variety of entertainment. The gem of this festival are the performances which take place inside the Pope's Palace itself. Tickets are expensive, but this is considered by many French and European thespians to be a crowning achievement of their career. The vast majority of performances are, of course, in French but a number of foreign companies perform in other languages including English. Even without attending any events, the atmosphere and street theatre give the city a marvellous feeling.
The Festival d'Avignon, or Avignon Festival, is an annual arts festival held in the French city of Avignon every summer in July in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes as well as in other locations of the city. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, it is the oldest existent festival in France. Alongside the official festival, the "In" one, a number of shows are presented in Avignon at the same time of the year and are known as the "Off".
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Palais des Papes
This is the palace where the Popes of Avignon ruled. For part of the period the Papacy was divided, with a Pope in Rome and another in Avignon. Most of the artwork inside (statues, frescoes) was destroyed during the French Revolution, but the impressive building still stands, and little bits of artwork, such as those that were too high to be convenient to ruin, remain.
Pont d'Avignon
It is a ruined bridge not far from the Palais des Papes. The bridge was built in the Middle Ages — before the arrival of the Papacy — perhaps partly to allow the local bishop to cross the river to Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, where the church authorities had installed themselves because of Avignon's then-infamous dirt and lawlessness.
The legend of the bridge's building is that a local shepherd, Benezet (a dialect form of Benedict) was inspired by angels to build a bridge. When his appeals to the town authorities proved fruitless, he picked up a vast block of stone and hurled it into the river, to be the bridge's foundation stone. Convinced by this demonstration of divine will, the bridge was swiftly built. The poor shepherd boy was canonised, and his chapel remains on the surviving portion of the bridge.
The bridge was built with 22 arches, reaching across to the tower of Philippe le Bel via small mid-stream islands. Over the centuries, as the islands shifted and merged into today's île de la Barthelasse, the bridge was repeatedly lost to floods and repeatedly rebuilt; after a series of 17th-century floods, it was abandoned and only 4 of the 22 arches remain. A multilingual audio tour of the bridge explains some of the local history.
A well-known song "Sur Le Pont D'Avignon" (on the bridge at Avignon) refers to the bridge. The bridge is far too narrow for dancing or festivals - the original text of the song was "Sous (under) le pont d'Avignon", referring to the festivals and entertainments staged on the île de la Barthelasse. The current version was popularised by a 19th-century operetta, whose librettist clearly assumed that 'sous le pont d'Avignon' would have meant in the river.
musée Calvet
Fine arts museum with works from 15th to 20th centuries housed in an 18th-century mansion.
Contemporary art museum developed from the collection of Yvon Lambert.