Oppede-le-Vieux

Oppède-le-Vieux is the village the Luberon abandoned. It stands on a rock spur on the north face of the massif, between Ménerbes and Maubec, and it is half ruin and half restoration — with a collapsing castle at the top, a Renaissance church on the terrace below it, and a handful of houses that people have brought back.

It gets a fraction of the visitors of its neighbours, and it is the most atmospheric place in the Luberon.

Why it was abandoned

The village was inhabited from the Middle Ages, under a castle that belonged in the sixteenth century to Jean Maynier, Baron of Oppède — the man who ordered the massacre of the Waldensians of the Luberon in 1545, in which several thousand people were killed and a dozen villages destroyed. He is not remembered fondly here.

By the nineteenth century the hill was impractical: no water, no road, everything carried up. Between 1910 and 1912 the population moved down to the plain and founded Oppède-les-Poulivets, taking the town hall and the school with them. The old village was left to fall down.

In the 1940s a group of artists and architects — among them Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry — moved into the ruins, and restoration has continued in fits ever since. Perhaps sixty people live there now.

What to see

• Notre-Dame d’Alidon — the collegiate church on the terrace below the castle, twelfth-century in origin and rebuilt in the sixteenth. It was left roofless for decades and has been restored; the terrace in front of it is where the view is.
• The castle — a genuine ruin, unstable in places and fenced where it needs to be. Do not climb into what is barriered off.
• The village — vaulted passages, half-restored houses, stone stairways, and a good deal of ivy and fig growing through walls
• The Sentier Vigneron — a marked path through the terraces below, with the Luberon vineyards and views back up at the ruin

Practical

• Cars stay at the bottom. A paid car park sits below the village and the climb up is 10–15 minutes on stone and gravel — steeper than it looks. Proper shoes.
• There is almost nothing there: a café or two in season, no shop, no facilities. Bring water.
• It is a ruin, not a museum. Some of it is fenced, and the fences are there for a reason.

Getting to Oppède-le-Vieux

• By car — 20 minutes from Cavaillon, 45 from Avignon. See parking in France.
• By bus — essentially none. This is a car destination.

Around

• Ménerbes — 6 km east along the ridge road
• Lacoste and Bonnieux — the next two villages along
• Abbaye Saint-Hilaire — a small thirteenth-century Carmelite house on the road to Ménerbes
• Gordes and Roussillon — across the valley

When to go

Spring and autumn, and late in the day. Oppède in low sun with nobody in it is the reason to come; in the middle of a July afternoon it is a hot climb over loose stone. Winter is bare and rather magnificent.

See when to visit Provence and the most beautiful villages in France.

Photo credits

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

• The village and castle — PoetishBookwormus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Notre-Dame d’Alidon — Spiesk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Weather in Oppède-le-Vieux

Updated: 1 October 2026