Ménerbes

Ménerbes runs along a narrow ridge on the south side of the Luberon, shaped — as the guidebooks never fail to say — like a ship at anchor above the vines. It is one of the Most Beautiful Villages of France, and it is the village that made the Luberon famous in English.

Ménerbes lies within the Luberon regional nature park. It does not make as strong an impression as Lacoste or Les Baux-de-Provence, and a visitor short on time could reasonably skip it. What it offers instead is an easy, unhurried version of Provençal village life, with the crowds thinner than the label suggests. Seeing the whole village, sights and photographs included, takes about an hour.

A Year in Provence

Peter Mayle bought a farmhouse just outside Ménerbes in the late 1980s and wrote A Year in Provence about the experience. The book sold in the millions, was filmed, and set off the wave of British and American house-buying that changed the Luberon permanently — property prices, restaurant menus, who lives here in August.

He followed it with a sequel, Toujours Provence.

Mayle himself moved away for a while because of the visitors, then came back and lived nearby until his death in 2018. The house is private and not marked; do not go looking for it.

A later Mayle novel, A Good Year, was filmed by Ridley Scott in 2006 with Russell Crowe, largely in the countryside around Ménerbes.

Mayle eventually returned to the Luberon, settling in Lourmarin rather than Ménerbes itself.

The village

One street along the spine of the ridge, with the drop on both sides and views to Mont Ventoux one way and the Luberon massif the other. It is small — twenty minutes end to end — and unusually quiet for a famous village, because there is no single monument for coaches to stop at.

What there is:

• The citadel at the western tip — a private house now, but the point of the ridge is public and the view is the best in the Luberon
• The church of Saint-Luc, fourteenth-century, at the eastern end
• The Hôtel de Tingry and the other seventeenth-century houses along Rue Cornille
• The Dora Maar house — Picasso bought it in 1944 for the photographer and painter Dora Maar, in exchange for a painting; it is now a residency for writers and artists
• Musée du Tire-Bouchon — a corkscrew museum at the Domaine de la Citadelle below the village, with a thousand of them, and a tasting room. Considerably better than it sounds.
• The campanile — a seventeenth-century clock tower roughly halfway along the ridge, topped with a wrought-iron bell cage, a shape found across Provence
• The Château du Castellet, at the far end of the ridge — home for a time to the painter Nicolas de Staël
• The Domaine de la Citadelle, which runs the corkscrew museum, belongs to the commune of Ménerbes, and its shop sells local wine

The street forks on the way up from the car park: right leads to the church, left to the restaurants, one of which serves lavender ice cream. The streets are few enough that a map is not necessary. Beside the campanile, an arch opens onto another view, and the mansion opposite sometimes hosts art exhibitions. The road between the two ends of the village, past Place de la Mairie and the sixteenth-century citadel, gives a clear run of views north to the Monts de Vaucluse and south to the Luberon. Rue Clovis-Hugues, off it, is named after the poet.

The siege

Ménerbes was held by Protestants during the Wars of Religion and withstood a Catholic siege for fifteen months in 1577–78 — the ridge is defensible on every side, and the village had a spring. It finally fell by negotiation rather than assault.

Despite an early numerical advantage, the Catholic besiegers could not take the town quickly, and Huguenot numbers and supplies grew as the siege wore on. The Protestant garrison, about 150 strong at the outset, held out through some 900 cannon volleys and an estimated 14 tonnes of lead shot before the two sides settled by negotiation, signing what became known as the capitulation glorieuse in December 1578.

What to eat and drink

The village has a couple of good restaurants and no supermarket. The Luberon AOC vineyards run right up to the ridge, and the Domaine de la Citadelle below the village takes visitors. Truffles are a serious local business in winter, sold at the markets in Carpentras and Apt.

See Provençal cuisine.

The Maison de la Truffe et du Vin, on Place de l’Horloge, sells local wine and truffles from a former hospice building known as the Hôtel d’Astier de Montfaucon. There is a market in the village every Thursday morning, and in summer the Maison runs wine tastings and truffle workshops.

Getting to Ménerbes

• By car — the only sensible way. 20 minutes from Cavaillon, 50 from Avignon. Park below the village and walk up.
• By bus — a very thin service from Cavaillon; not a realistic day trip.
• Parking — free, shaded, and about 100 metres from the old town, with a public toilet

See parking in France.

Around Ménerbes

• Bonnieux — 10 km east along the same road, and the next village on the ridge
• Lacoste — 5 km, with the Marquis de Sade’s ruined castle, now owned by Pierre Cardin
• Oppède-le-Vieux — 6 km west, a half-abandoned village below its ruined castle, and the least visited of them all
• Gordes and Roussillon — across the valley on the north side
• Abbaye Saint-Hilaire — 3 km, a thirteenth-century Benedictine monastery with a small cloister and old frescoes in its chapel, now a working vineyard of some 100 hectares that also produces and sells wine
• Parc aux Escargots — a snail farm outside the village, signposted off the D24, with around 30,000 snails, a guided tour, and a restaurant built around snail dishes

When to go

May, June, September and October. Ménerbes is one of the Luberon villages that stays bearable in summer simply because there is no single sight to queue for — but the whole region is at its best in the autumn, when the vines turn and the light goes long.

See when to visit Provence.

Photo credits

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

• Ménerbes above the vines — Jean-Marc Rosier, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Rue Kléber Guendon — Romainbehar, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Weather in Ménerbes

Updated: 23 September 2026