The Motor Routes of France: To the Châteaux of Touraine, Biarritz, the Pyrenees, the Riviera, & the Rhone ValleyHome, Gordon
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The Motor Routes of France: To the Châteaux of Touraine, Biarritz, the Pyrenees, the Riviera, & the Rhone Valley
Home, Gordon
Automobile travel -- France -- Guidebooks; France -- Description and travel
=Villeneuve-les-Avignons.=--Interesting old town on right bank of
Rhone: (1) Fort St. André, containing remains of Benedictine abbey;
(2) square tower for defence of the Bridge of St. Bénézet; (3)
parish church of fourteenth century; (4) hospital, containing
picture-gallery and magnificent tomb of Innocent VI.
=Roquemaure.=--A small town, dominated by the ruins of its castle.
=Orange.=--A quiet little town, containing two magnificent Roman
structures--(1) A triumphal arch, (2) a large theatre; the Church
of Notre Dame belongs to the twelfth century.
=Piolenc.=--Small town, with remains of ramparts and a Cluniac
priory.
=Mornas.=--Another small town, with medieval gateway and ruins of
twelfth-century château on the cliff above.
=Montdragon.=--A village, dominated by a fine château of the eleventh
century.
=Lapalud.=--A dusty roadside village.
=Pierrelatte.=--A poor little town by an isolated mass of rock, from
which the place gets its name.
=Donzère.=--A small town, with old walls, gateway, a ruined castle,
and a Romanesque church.
=Montélimar.=--A busy modern town, famous for its almond ‘nougat’;
dominating the place on the east side is the Romanesque château,
now a prison; two gateways of the ramparts and two
fifteenth-century houses survive.
=Saulce.=--A village, with a few slight Roman remains near to the
Château of Freycinet.
=Livron.=--A little town, with walls and a ruined castle.
[Illustration: TOWN PLAN NO. 26.--AVIGNON.]
It is unfortunate that Avignon has straggling suburbs outside its circle
of wonderfully preserved walls, for if this new growth could be swept
away there would appear on the plain a city of medieval aspect,
encircled within its machicolated ramparts. Until this is done those who
delight in such permanent pictures of the Middle Ages must be content
with the views of the walls to be had from the fairly wide boulevards
outside them and from the river side of the town. From across the Rhone
the strange piled-up mass of the Papal palace shows a striking
silhouette, and gives Avignon that feeling of romance so lacking in some
towns whose relics of the past are more remarkable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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