The most dramatic village in the Luberon — ochre stone stacked above the Calavon valley
Gordes is the most-photographed village in the Luberon — a stack of pale limestone houses climbing a steep escarpment, with a Renaissance château at its crown. The view from across the valley, where the entire village appears to grow organically from the rock, is one of the defining images of Provençal France. Below the village, the Cistercian Abbaye de Sénanque sits in a lavender valley — the scene of purple rows framing the grey stone abbey is among the most famous photographs in France.
The village has been continuously inhabited since the Bronze Age and passed through Roman, Carolingian, and feudal hands before the Renaissance château was built by Bertrand de Simiane in 1525. During World War II, Gordes served as a major Resistance stronghold; the Germans retaliated by burning the village in 1944, killing several dozen inhabitants. The cubist painter Victor Vasarely owned the château from 1970–1996 and opened a museum there; the building now houses temporary exhibitions.