Golden hilltop villages of Provence
The Luberon is what people picture when they imagine Provence. Rolling lavender fields, ancient hilltop villages, markets spilling out across cobbled squares. It somehow lives up to every expectation – and then some.
It’s a natural regional park, stretching across a long limestone ridge between the Durance valley and the Apt basin. The landscape shifts constantly. Forests of oak and cedar. Rocky outcrops. Hidden valleys with cherry orchards and dry-stone walls.
The villages are the real draw. Gordes, Ansouis, Roussillon, Bonnieux, Lourmarin, Cucuron, among many more. Each one perched on a hillside as if it grew straight out of the rock. Honey-coloured, unhurried, and almost aggressively picturesque.
Come June and July the lavender fields around the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque are genuinely unforgettable – a sea of purple beneath a Romanesque abbey that has barely changed in 900 years.
From late August, the vendanges start – the grape harvest season. The Luberon is full of vineyards. Pop by one for a real taste of the terroir.
The pace of life here is the whole point. Long lunches, afternoon markets, evenings that stretch on indefinitely. The Luberon doesn’t rush you. It never will.
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