Every design for Avignon

Avignon grew up where the Rhône meets the Durance, and its oldest heart is a limestone outcrop, the rocher des Doms, high enough to stay dry when the river floods. Around it the town's mediaeval walls still run unbroken, built from a soft local limestone, enclosing a historic centre listed by UNESCO for the Palais des Papes, the cathedral and the bridge.

Standing on the rock above the river, it is hard not to feel the pull of the landscape: the wide Rhône with the île de la Barthelasse in its stream, the wooded hill of Montfavet to the east, the limestone hills around Villeneuve-lès-Avignon across the water, where the Fort Saint-André and the Tour Philippe le Bel keep watch. Seven popes lived in this city, and the Palais des Papes still rises above it all.

Below, the Pont Saint-Bénezet reaches out into the current: the bridge the whole world knows simply as the Pont d'Avignon, stone arches over moving water.