It was in the year 1305 that Pope Clement V. removed the headquarters of the representatives of St. Peter from Rome to Avignon, and it remained there until 1411, when what Petrarch termed ‘a shameful exile’ came to an end and the Popes returned to Rome. During the century of their residence in Avignon the Popes built the enormous pile of buildings called a palace, although it is a forbidding fortress and one of the finest examples of fourteenth-century military architecture in existence. It is, as Hare has fittingly described it, ‘rather the citadel of an Asiatic tyrant than the representative of the God of peace.’ The walls and towers encircling the town were begun by Innocent VI. (1352-1362), and finished by his successor, Urban V. Until lately the palace was utilized for barracks, but fortunately the soldiers are now quartered elsewhere, and the restorers are peeling off plaster and taking down the ugly walls and partitions of recent times, thus bringing to light the original splendour of the Papal residence. A magnificently carved stone doorway of large dimensions has been literally dug out of a most unpromising wall, and when the work is completed the palace-fortress will be one of the most remarkable of the historic monuments of France. Fortunately, one of the smaller apartments, with richly painted walls and ceilings, was sufficiently remarkable to escape the destructive hands of those who built up the great doorway, and the chapels in the Tour St. Jean are also covered with wall paintings. The palace is built on a raised mass of rock, and some of the irregularities of design are due to this fact. Just to the north, on the same rock, is the interesting Romanesque Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms, first built in early Christian times on the site of a Roman temple. Of the 157 Cardinals and Bishops buried in the church there are no monuments, and even the elaborate tomb of Pope John XXII., at one time in the middle of the nave, has been placed in the antechamber leading to the sacristy. This John XXII., who held the Chair of St. Peter between 1316 and 1334, was the son of a shoemaker of Cahors. His genius seems to have lain chiefly in the acquisition of vast wealth, for when he died he had laid up treasure on earth [Illustration: No. 20. AVIGNON TO VALENCE.]