Villeneuve-les-Avignon, on the west side of the Rhone, attracts one from the first, with its romantic grouping under the imposing bulk of the fourteenth-century Fort St. André. The great square tower by the river, also of yellow stone, was built by Philippe le Bel for the defence of the bridge. Inside the Fort St. André are the remains of a Benedictine abbey and a Romanesque chapel.
The interesting parish church of Villeneuve dates from the fourteenth century, and contains the tomb of Cardinal Arnauld de Via, the founder. In the chapel of the hospital on the other side of the street is the splendid tomb of Pope Innocent VI. (1352-1362), who did much to make amends for the misdeeds of Clement VI. The richly sculptured canopy rises in pinnacles to the roof, and the whole work reveals the enormous wealth of the Avignonese Popes.
In the picture-gallery of the hospital one of the most interesting works is the portrait of the lovely Marquise de Castellane, who, with her husband, was much at the Court of Louis XIV., and became known as ‘La Belle Provençale.’ When the Marquis de Castellane died she married the Marquis de Ganges, and returned with him to Avignon. Here she was subjected to the unpleasant attentions of her brother-in-law, the Chevalier de Ganges, whose ill-controlled and illicit passion she firmly resisted, in spite of the efforts of another brother-in-law, the Abbot de Ganges. It was this villainous ecclesiastic who finally gave the beautiful Marquise poison, and the brutal Chevalier, on finding her dying, ran his rapier through her body several times. Both brothers were condemned to be broken alive on the wheel.
Roquemaure has the ruins of a picturesque medieval castle, where Clement V., the first of the Avignonese Pontiffs, died in 1314.
The road crosses the Rhone about two kilometres north of Roquemaure, and a short six miles brings one to
ORANGE
This quiet old town contains two astonishingly perfect relics of the Roman city of Aurasio—a triumphal arch and a theatre. The first stands on a circle of grass just outside the present town, and the road leading up to it in both directions gives the great arch a most striking position. A certain amount of restoration has been carried out, but it does not detract from the impressiveness of the work. There are several sculptured panels, and a frieze in which one can still see a great deal of a big battle subject.
It is generally believed that this is the triumphal arch put up in A.D. 21 to commemorate the victory of Tiberius over Sacrovir and Florus. It is certainly the best in France, and there are only two others in the world that surpass it in size and importance.
The theatre is an astonishingly perfect structure, retaining the enormous stone wall forming the back of the building. It is 118 feet high, 340 feet long, and 13 feet thick, and no doubt it was spared during the Middle Ages owing to its usefulness as an outer barbican or bastion to the castle on the high ground immediately above. There are indications showing that the theatre was roofed, and evidences of fire on the top of the vast wall reveal the agency which removed this unique feature. The three tiers of seats were cut out of the hillside, so that the building-up of the great auditorium was greatly simplified. The lowest tier of seats has been wonderfully well preserved, and the others have been reconstructed in recent years for the annual dramatic and lyrical performances given by the Comédie Française in August.
‘In August, 1886, a venture was made at Orange the like of which has rarely been made in France in modern times: a new French play demanding positive and strong recognition, the magnificent “Empereur d’Arles,” by the Avignon poet Alexis Mouzin, was given its first presentation in the Orange Theatre—in the provinces—instead of first being produced on the Paris stage. In direct defiance of the modern French canons of centralization, the great audience was brought together not to ratify opinions formulated by Parisian critics, but to express its own opinion at first hand. Silvain, of the Comédie Française, was the Maximien; Madame Caristie-Martel, of the Odéon (a granddaughter of Caristie, the architect who saved the theatre from ruin), was the Minervine. The support was strong. The stately tragedy—vividly contrasting the tyranny and darkness of pagan Rome with the spirit of light and freedom arising in Christian Gaul—was in perfect keeping with its stately frame. The play went on in a whirl of enthusiastic approval to a triumphant end. There was no question of ratifying the opinion of Parisian critics: those Southerners formed and delivered an opinion of their own. In other words, the defiance of conventions was an artistic victory, a decentralizing success’ (Thomas A. Janvier).