Les Baux de Provence is a small town located in the Alpilles mountains of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region of southern France. The town sits on a rocky outcropping overlooking a vast valley landscape to the south. Something cool about the village is that its built within the cliffs of the mountain and you can barely even see it when viewing it from only a short distance away. For instance, you may not have realized that there are buildings in the photograph above but if you look closely you can actually see them hidden amongst the rocks.
Above the town is an old castle ruins with an expansive rocky grounds that offers various panoramic lookout points of the valley. There you are able to view the many farmers fields and olives orchards scattered throughout the plains.
Les Baux is situated fairly close to the city of Avignon, only about 22km away. We had to drive right past it on our way back to our hotel after our hike in the Calanques of Cassis.. We decided to make a quick stop over as we were passing through. Why not?
We parked our car outside the city along the main highway and then hiked the stone staircase up to the town. There is paid parking along the highway and a large parking lot just a little further ahead.
The town itself is quite small and definitely has a touristy vibe about it. There are a number of restaurants and cafés scattered throughout the streets as well as small boutique shops selling the usual lavender products and other small town wares common in the area.
The first thing that we noticed after walking through the main city gates was a small courtyard next to a cafe and town hall looking building. From here we got our first good view of the mountains in the surrounding area as well as the path that we had just walked up to get there. The village is basically a one stop shop for birds eye views of the Provence region.
After taking in the view from the courtyard we spent some time casually strolling through the rocky streets, getting a feel for the town that almost appears to have grown out of the mountain itself.
The best part of Les Baux (at least in my opinion) is the expansive grounds located at the top of the city. It's up the hill and just outside of the old castle ruins, which you have to pay to enter. We didn't feel that it was necessary for us to enter the ruins. There were plenty of things to see outside of them,
like a 270 degree panoramic view of the valley below and several old structures hinting at the city's early history of being a defensive outpost.
We spent some time up on the platform looking out over the valley and reading the plaques that explained the old monuments on the grounds.
There were also a few lavender beds up there and I was a bit surprised to see that they were starting to bloom. I figured that they would flower later given the elevation but they were there nonetheless.
At this point the Lavender was still a novelty for us so it was a bit of a welcomed surprise.
It was super windy that day on the mountain. I had to hang onto my hat to keep it from blowing off my head and I was actually quite worried that my phone would blow out of my hands when taking pictures near the edge of the cliff. Luckily I managed to hang onto everything though.
By that point it was getting quite late in the afternoon and we were tired from our hike so we didn't spend a great deal of time in the village of Les Baux.
All in all we spent about an hour or so there before heading back to our car and then back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.
We made our way back through town and through the main gate of the village making brief stops to take a few photos.
When driving away I happened to spot a look out point that looked back on the village tucked away in the mountains. I pulled over to have a look and of course took a few photos. Like the image at the begining of this post, you can barely even tell that a city resides in that location. It's there though, if you look closely.
