Les Beaux 2002

Still Sunday in Provence. We just drove from Arles to Les Baux. We are not sure what to expect of a French town, where Bauxite was first discovered and after which the mineral ore used to make aluminum was named. According to legend, the Val d'Enfer in which it lies was haunted by witches and goblins. There are tales of a dead city. Songs of unrequited courtly love. What will we discover?

What we discovered was one of the highlights of our trip. There is in fact a dead city built as a fortress above the living town of Les Baux. And the strange rock formations give your imagination freedom to roam the realm of witches and goblins. We loved this place. After spending the afternoon here, we headed back to Avignon. As we were driving away to the north, I commented the "sun is on the wrong side of the car." Sure enough, we'd gotten turned around and were heading south. Quick u-turn and all was well.

These pictures were taken in April 2002.

Les Baux is perched atop a hill overlooking this nice valley.
This photo, taken near sunset as we were departing gives you a sense for the setting of this neat place.
Atop the city, inside the fortress are ancient houses carved from the living rock, narrow passageways high up and exposed to the full force of the considerable wind, and sun drenched plazas.
There were also some full sized working replicas of medieval siege engines. This catapult would throw a "one man rock" hundreds of meters and was intended to batter down walls.

This one would throw a glob of Greek Fire. when it arrived at it target it was like a primitive form of Napalm ... nothing good could come of it, I'm sure.
Here a narrow street leads up to the fortress.
At the top of the page, I mentioned houses carved out of the living rock. Here is a wall of a ruined house and you can see pock marks where the minerals have been leached out of the rock over the centuries. I really like this picture ... the high contrast, mathematically random pattern appeals to me.