Coming down the Rhone you spend a lot of time thinking about locks, current and commercial barges, and not nearly enough about what waits at the bottom. Then you round the last bend before Avignon and the Palais des Papes rises off the riverbank, vast and pale, with the broken arches of the old bridge reaching out into the stream. We had read about it. We were not prepared for the size of it from the water.
Avignon is one of the great river cities of France, and unlike most of the headline towns of Provence it puts a proper visitors' quay right under its walls. Reaching Avignon by boat is genuinely easy, and that combination of access and spectacle makes it one of the best stops on the whole Rhone.
Where the boat goes
The port de plaisance sits near the town centre, with a harbourmaster's office, a reception barge and a quay along the quai de la Ligne some 400 metres long. Night mooring runs around 18 euros, and you get fuel, water, electricity, showers, a crane on request and a slipway. You call up on VHF channels 9 and 16, and there are restaurants within walking distance. From the quay you are a short stroll from the ramparts and through the gate into the old city.
This matters because the Rhone is a serious river, not a gentle canal. The current is strong, the locks are huge commercial structures, and there are long stretches with nowhere sensible to stop. Avignon giving you a real town quay, rather than a windy pontoon out in the stream, is a genuine luxury. If the river itself is new to you, my guide to the Rhone from Lyon to the Mediterranean sets out the locks, the lock heights and the way the Mistral wind funnels down the valley and can make handling along the quay a real test.
Inside the popes' palace
This is the reason you came. For most of the fourteenth century the popes ruled the Catholic world not from Rome but from Avignon, and the palace they built is the largest Gothic palace in Europe, a fortress and a court rolled into one. From the river it dominates the skyline; up close it is genuinely overwhelming, a maze of halls, chapels and frescoed chambers.
The palace is open every day, all year round. From 1 March to early November the hours are 9am to 7pm, with last admission at 6pm, though times shift month to month so it is worth checking before you go. Tickets are 12 euros for the palace alone, 14.50 euros for the palace and the bridge, and 17 euros for the palace, bridge and gardens combined. Children under 8 go free, and an interactive Histopad tablet that reconstructs the rooms as they once were is included in the price.
The Histopad is better than it sounds. The palace was stripped during the Revolution, so the halls are largely bare stone today, and holding up the tablet to see the chambers redressed in their medieval colour does more to bring the place alive than any amount of imagination.
The bridge that goes nowhere
Everyone knows the song. The Pont Saint-Benezet, the Pont d'Avignon of the nursery rhyme, once spanned the whole Rhone with 22 arches; floods carried most of it away over the centuries and only four arches now reach out from the town bank into the river. You can walk out onto what remains, which is exactly the sort of beautiful, useless monument that makes a place memorable. The combined palace-and-bridge ticket at 14.50 euros is the sensible buy if you want both.
You will pass under the modern bridges and beside the stump of the old one as you arrive, so you get the view from the water before you ever set foot ashore. Bring a camera up on deck for the last half mile into Avignon.
Beyond the headline sights
Avignon rewards wandering once you are off the boat. The walled old city is compact and walkable, the Place de l'Horloge fills with cafe tables, and the covered market, Les Halles, with its living green wall is a fine place to provision before you carry on. If you are here in July, the city hosts one of the biggest theatre festivals in the world and accommodation and quay space both get tight, so plan around it.
The town also makes a base for the southern Rhone wine country. Chateauneuf-du-Pape lies just upriver, and a hired car or bike gets you among the vineyards in under half an hour. There is a pleasing symmetry to drinking wine named for the popes in the city the popes built.
Handling the boat on the quay
The quai de la Ligne is a fine berth, but it is on a powerful river and the Mistral, the cold north wind that funnels down the Rhone valley, can make coming alongside a handful. When the Mistral blows it can hold for days at 30 knots and more, pushing hard against the quay, and a boat that handles sweetly in still air becomes a different animal. Come in with enough way to keep steerage, get a spring line ashore early, and have fenders well placed because the current and the wind together will try to set you down the quay.
If the wind is up when you arrive, it is worth waiting offshore for a lull rather than fighting it onto the wall single-handed. The locals time their movements around the Mistral, and so should you. Once you are secure, the same wind that made the approach awkward gives Avignon its famous clear light and clean air, so there is a payoff.
A river city with deep roots
Avignon was a Roman town before it was a papal one, and it has been a river port for two thousand years, the Rhone carrying salt, wine and stone up and down the valley long before the popes arrived. That long relationship with the water is why the town turns its best face to the river, and why arriving by boat feels so right. The tourist office runs a riverside walk that tells the story, and the Ile de la Barthelasse, the long island opposite the city, gives you the postcard view of the walls and the bridge from across the stream, an easy stroll or cycle from the quay.
For all its fame, Avignon stays a real working town outside the festival weeks, and a couple of days here lets you slow down between the demands of the river. After days of locks and current, that is no small thing.
A natural part of a longer trip
Most people who reach Avignon by boat are passing through, either heading down to the Mediterranean or coming up from it. The next great stop downriver is Arles, the Roman capital of Provence, only a short run away, and I have written that one up in Arles and Roman Provence by boat. The two cities make a natural pair: papal Gothic at Avignon, Roman antiquity at Arles, both reachable on the same stretch of river.
If your Rhone trip is part of a longer crossing of France by water, the canals feeding the river from the north open up the whole Rhone from Lyon to the Mediterranean route, the fast inland highway to the Med.
The numbers worth noting
- Town quay: roughly 18 euros a night, services on the quai de la Ligne, call VHF 9 or 16.
- Palace alone: 12 euros; palace and bridge: 14.50 euros; palace, bridge and gardens: 17 euros.
- Palace hours: 9am to 7pm in the main season, last entry 6pm, open daily year-round.
- Children under 8: free. Histopad tablet: included.
We meant to stay one night at Avignon and stayed three. The palace took a full morning, the bridge an afternoon, and the cafes the rest. For a city you can tie up beneath and walk straight into, there are few better stops anywhere on the rivers of France.
