Why
Avignon? Well, the considerable Italian connection is that it's where the popes
moved to when political shenanigans meant they needed to be in France, and to be
French themselves. Avignon of the Popes by Edwin Mullins tells the story
well, with more spicy detail than historical probing. The art-historical
interest concerns how and if the artists they brought to Avignon, including,
most famously, Simone Martini, influenced art in France. The trip is the first
of the many this year with Art Pursuits, this time with Sally the
lecturer, Julie tour managing, as mentioned in many past trips, and a
new, but strangely familiar face, in Francesca, an art-historian learning the
tour-managing ropes.
Wednesday
11th
Overnighting (rm 430) at the Heathrow Hilton my alarm was set
for 5 am, but I woke up naturally at 20-to, to answer the call of nature. A very
early Piccadilly Line train took me to terminal 3, not 5 as is usual with BA.
And so began a morning of meeting familiar faces from previous trips, but which
ones? Most familiar were David and Jenny, with whom a breakfast of Giraffe
porridge was taken. Bag drop, security and boarding were all smooth and
queue-free, and the flight far from full. New EU border checks for UK residents,
involving fingerprints and a photo, had been implemented since my last trip, but
the machines to do the registration business were out of order. The desk
officers did the business instead, however, which took a while, but we were
through and on the coach by 11.30 , on schedule, and on the way to Avignon and
the Hôtel Cloître Saint Louis
Most of our rooms were ready, so after a brief settle in we walked to Place de
l’Horloge to disperse for lunches, mine being a mediocre margherita pizza and a
very small beer. After lunch we walked to, and onto, the Pont St Bénézet, famous
from the song, for a windswept run through Avignon’s origins and the city’s
development during the Middle Ages. We then continued to Notre Dame des Doms,
the 12th-century cathedral. In the porch we appreciated the faint first
underdrawings of frescoes painted in the late 1330s by Simone Martini. Inside we
admired the OTT tomb canopy of Pope John XXII and the more modest and admirable
tomb of Pope Benedict XII, with an always-pleasing row of pleurants.
Back to the hotel for an hour's battery recharging before welcome drinks at 6.30
and our evening meal, which was a caramelised onion topped pancake thing
followed by, for the veggies, bulgar wheat with mushrooms and a couple of
asparagus tops, and a profiterole. All OK, but not special.
Thursday
12th
Breakfast featured orange juice from a machine with a hopper of
oranges on top dropping them through to be squeezed, good coffee from a machine,
a good cereal selection and mini, but fresh, croissants which went well with the
superior fig jam.
We left at 9.00 walking to the Palais des Papes, for an all-morning visit taking
in the upper layers of of the Simone Martini frescoes we admired the under-sinopia
of yesterday. Plenty of chapels and papal apartments to be seen, including the
work of Matteo Giovanetti, which was impressive.
There was an included lunch at the Carré du Palais next door to the Palace. The
food was well presented and pretty edible. However the toilets were unisex so us
few chaps being able to breeze in whilst the women queued was not possible.
After lunch to the Musée du Petit Palais for carved Romanesque capitals from a
cloister at Notre Dame des Doms, bits of a transi tomb and a mixed quality
collection of Italian panel paintings, including some roundels by Simone Martini
and many Virgin and Child panels painted by artists of varying fame and talent.
Finishing at 4.30 there was nothing for it but to stagger back to the hotel for
a rest and a bath. But which of my two bathrooms to use?
Friday
13th
After breakfast a coach took us to Arles and we began with
Alyscamps, an ancient Roman necropolis which is famous for rows of sarcophagi,
lots of them very mossy. It also has an atmospheric crumbling church.
Then to the excellent new Museum of Ancient Arles and Province, for more fine
sarcophagi, the ones here being the upper ones from the three-deep layering in
the Alyscamps. There were also amphora of many attractive shapes and sizes and
an impressive, and very long, Gallo-Roman barge salvaged from the Rhone’s in
2004.
After lunch - pizza and wheat beer in a square bathed in actual warm sunshine,
with sightings of an actual cat - we regrouped to admire the portal and cloister
of the church of St Trophîme both of which were as spectacular as the brochure
claimed.
The church of St Gilles du Gard, which the coach then took us to, suffered much
in comparison. It's portal sculpture and the ruins of the old church out back
weren't a patch.
For our independent dinner me and D & J went to an Italian very near the hotel.
The pasta was fine, as was the beer, but the gelato was better - vanilla, mango
and calisson biscuit flavours.
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Saturday 14th
The woman checking our names in for breakfast remembered my name,
already, which is equally flattering and worrying. An 8.20 start this morning,
for our coach to Orange and the Triumphal Arch on the outskirts of town, then
into town to see the well-preserved Roman theatre. The Museum of Art and
History, in a 17th century house over the road was a quirky treat.
An independent lunch with the tour staff turned into a Margherita pizza again as
the burger veggie was off.
We returned by coach via Villeneuve les Avignon to admire cloisters, frescos by
Matteo Giovanetti, and a papal tomb at La Chartreuse Carthusian monastery. Then
downhill to the Musee Pierre de Luxembourg to see a spectacular altarpiece of
The Coronation of the Virgin by Enguerrand Quarton, once in the same chapel
as the tomb mention just now, and a fine ivory Madonna and Child.
Before crashing out at the hotel I went shopping, for rooibos vanilla and almond
tea bags, marzipan fruits and cinnamon chocolate houses from Jeff de Bruges, a
box of calisson biscuits, the later discovered in gelato form last night.
This evening's final meal was at the Brasserie de l’Horloge. Much asparagus for
the veggies, but a nice apple tart with vanilla ice cream for afters.
Sunday 15th
After our final breakfast, we checked out and were coached to the Pont du Gard,
which is actually not a bridge a spectacular Roman aqueduct. It was SO
gusty/windy! The museum in the car park is big and new, was full of space and
modern-museum trickery and videos, but made one yearn for some cases of old
stuff with dusty labels.
After lunch at ‘Les Terraasse’ restaurant, literally overlooking the Pont du
Gard, we were whisked to Marseille airport and home. |
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