Cucuron

Cucuron is a village of about 1,800 on the south slope of the Luberon, 10 km east of Lourmarin. It has the single best village square in Provence, and it is not a square at all — it is a rectangular basin of water under enormous plane trees.

The étang

The Étang de la Bonde — locally just l’étang — is a stone-lined reservoir dug in the fifteenth century to feed the village mills and irrigate the gardens below. The plane trees round it were planted in the nineteenth century and are now huge; in summer the whole space is in green shade and the water reflects the ochre and yellow fronts of the cafés.

It is the setting for the Tuesday market, which is a real one — this is a farming village, not a resort — and it was used by Ridley Scott for the market scenes of A Good Year in 2006.

The village

• The beffroi — the twelfth-century Tour de l’Horloge, the last piece of the medieval walls, with a wrought-iron campanile on top
• Église Notre-Dame-de-Beaulieu — thirteenth-century Romanesque with a Gothic nave, and a much-admired eighteenth-century altarpiece
• Musée Marc Deydier — village life and local archaeology in a seventeenth-century house
• The donjon — the ruined keep of Saint-Michel on the hill, with a view over the Durance valley to the Sainte-Victoire

Le Rite du Mai

On the Saturday before the feast of Saint Tulle, the men of the village carry a whole poplar trunk — stripped, twenty metres long — from the woods into the village on their shoulders and raise it beside the church. The rite has been recorded since the sixteenth century and is said to date to a vow made during an outbreak of plague.

Food

For its size Cucuron eats unusually well: there is a Michelin-starred restaurant on the étang, and the Tuesday market brings in the produce of the southern Luberon — melons, cherries, goat cheeses, and the olive oil of the Aix hills. The wines are Luberon AOC, from the slopes immediately around.

Getting there

• By car — the D56 off the D973 in the Durance valley. Lourmarin 15 minutes, Aix 45, Avignon an hour, Marseille 1 h 10. See parking in France.
• Parking — free below the village; do not try to park on the étang itself, and on Tuesdays arrive early.
• By bus — limited services from Pertuis and Aix.

Around

• Lourmarin — 10 km, with its Renaissance château and Camus’s grave
• Ansouis — 6 km, one of the most beautiful villages in France
• Vaugines — 3 km, where Jean de Florette was filmed
• Étang de la Bonde (the lake, not the basin) — 8 km, swimming in summer
• Mourre Nègre — the highest point of the Luberon at 1,125 m, walkable from the village in about three hours

When to go

April to June and September to October. Tuesday for the market. Cucuron is less visited than Lourmarin or Bonnieux and keeps its ordinary life going through the season, which is the whole reason to prefer it.

See the Luberon and when to visit Provence.

Photo credits

Photographs on this page come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences:

• The basin under the planes — Georges Seguin (Okki), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• The reflections, and the rooftops — François de Dijon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• The belfry — Véronique Pagnier, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

Other places on this site within easy reach, as the crow flies:

• Apt — 12 km
• Bonnieux — 12 km
• Lacoste — 15 km
• Colorado Provençal — 16 km
• Roussillon — 19 km
• Saint-Saturnin-lès-Apt — 20 km

Weather in Cucuron

Updated: 22 October 2026