Palais des Papes

Palais des Papes

A palace fit for popes

In the southern French city of Avignon rises a building of astonishing size and power: the Palais des Papes, the Palace of the Popes. With its soaring stone walls, mighty towers and battlements, it looks more like a vast fortress than a palace — and it is the largest Gothic palace ever built anywhere in the world. For most of the 1300s it was the centre of the entire Catholic Church, the home of the popes themselves.

When the popes left Rome

For most of history the pope, the leader of the Catholic Church, has lived in Rome. But in the early 1300s, amid political troubles in Italy, the popes moved to Avignon in France, and for about seventy years — from 1309 to 1377 — they ruled the Church from here rather than from Rome. This strange and important period is known as the Avignon Papacy.

To house themselves in suitable grandeur and safety, the Avignon popes built the enormous palace we see today, raised mainly between 1335 and 1352. It was both a magnificent residence and a strong fortress, reflecting the wealth and power — and the worries — of the popes in those troubled times.

A fortress and a treasure-house

The Palais des Papes was really two palaces joined together, built by two different popes. Inside its thick walls were grand ceremonial halls, private papal apartments, chapels, kitchens, storerooms and treasuries. Some of the rooms were decorated with beautiful wall-paintings, including delightful scenes of hunting and fishing in the pope's private study, a few of which still survive.

The palace had to hold not only the pope but his whole court, with hundreds of officials, servants and guards, making it almost a small fortified town in itself. Its great size shows just how powerful and wealthy the medieval Church had become.

The bridge of Avignon

Near the palace stands another famous Avignon landmark: the old bridge over the river Rhône, the Pont Saint-Bénézet, celebrated in the well-known French children's song "Sur le pont d'Avignon". Most of the bridge was washed away by floods long ago, leaving only a few arches reaching out into the river — a romantic ruin beside the great palace.

After the popes

Eventually the popes returned to Rome, and Avignon's great age ended. The palace was later used as a fortress and barracks, and over time it lost much of its rich furnishing. But the mighty building itself endured, and in modern times it has been restored and protected as one of the great monuments of France, recognised by UNESCO.

Visiting today

Visitors can explore the palace's vast halls, papal apartments, chapels and the painted private rooms, climbing to the terraces for sweeping views over Avignon, the river Rhône and the famous broken bridge. Displays and modern projections help bring the age of the popes vividly to life. Colossal, powerful and steeped in a strange chapter of history, the Palais des Papes is one of the most impressive Gothic buildings on earth.