Vaison-la-Romaine

Vaison-la-Romaine is 30 km north-east of Avignon, at the foot of Mont Ventoux, and it is three towns in one: a Roman city excavated over ten hectares, a medieval town on the rock across the river, and a working Provençal market town between them.

The Roman excavations here are the largest in France, and almost nobody has heard of them.

Roman Vaison

Vasio Vocontiorum was the capital of the Vocontii, a Gaulish people who kept an unusual degree of autonomy under Rome, and it grew wealthy. Two separate quarters have been dug out in the middle of the modern town:

• Puymin — the larger, with the House of the Messii, a colonnaded portico, and the theatre, cut into the hillside and still used for concerts
• La Villasse — a paved street with a drain still running under it, the baths, and the House of the Silver Bust

What makes them worth the visit is domestic detail rather than monuments: floor plans of ordinary rich houses, the plumbing, the shop fronts. The museum on the Puymin site holds the mosaics and the statuary found here.

The Roman bridge

A single arch of the first century crosses the Ouvèze between the two halves of the town, and it has carried traffic for two thousand years. In September 1992 a flash flood put the river 17 m above its normal level, killed 37 people and destroyed much of the modern town — and the Roman bridge held. The parapet was swept away and replaced; the arch was untouched.

The upper town

Across the bridge and up: a medieval town on a rock, with a ruined castle of the counts of Toulouse on top. In the twelfth century the population moved up here for safety and stayed for six hundred years, coming back down only in the nineteenth.

Cobbled lanes, vaulted passages, fountains, restored houses and almost no traffic. The climb takes fifteen minutes and the view from the castle covers the Ouvèze valley and Mont Ventoux.

Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth

The old cathedral in the lower town is eleventh- and twelfth-century Romanesque, built on Roman foundations that are visible in the base of the apse — column drums and cornices reused as footings. Its cloister is one of the best in Provence and the quietest place in Vaison.

The market

Tuesday morning, and it is among the largest in the Vaucluse — several hundred stalls filling the whole lower town. Come early; the town is not built for the traffic it brings.

What to eat and drink

This is the northern edge of the southern Rhône vineyards: Séguret, Rasteau, Cairanne and Gigondas are all within twenty minutes, and the Côtes du Rhône Villages appellations here are among the best value in France.

See French wines and Provençal cuisine.

Where it is

Vaison stands about 30 km north-east of Orange, in the Vaucluse, with Mont Ventoux filling the view to the south-east. It is on the official list of the hundred Plus Beaux Détours de France — the towns worth leaving the motorway for — and it earns the place: two thousand years of history in a town you can cross on foot in twenty minutes.

Visiting it divides neatly in two, and most people do both in a day: the Roman excavations on the flat, and the medieval upper town on the rock across the river.

The market runs on Tuesdays all year, not only in season, and it is one of the largest in the region — the main reason to arrange your visit for a Tuesday morning rather than any other day.

Getting to Vaison

• By car — 45 minutes from Avignon, 30 from Carpentras. See parking in France.
• By bus — from Avignon and Carpentras, a few a day; check the return.
• By train — no station. Orange and Carpentras are the nearest.

Around Vaison

• Dentelles de Montmirail — the serrated limestone combs 10 km south, with walking and climbing, and Gigondas and Vacqueyras at their feet
• Séguret — one of the most beautiful villages in France, 10 km away, built along a cliff

• Mont Ventoux — the bare summit, 45 minutes east
• Orange — the Roman theatre, 30 km west
• Châteauneuf-du-Pape — 40 km south-west

When to go

April to June and September to October. The Roman sites are exposed and there is little shade; July and August are hot work. Tuesday for the market, and the theatre has a festival of dance and music in July.

See when to visit Provence.

Weather in Vaison-la-Romaine

Updated: 21 September 2026