Gordes
• Vaucluse (84220) • Population: 2,031 • Altitude: 373 m
Gallery of 9 photos for Gordes
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Gordes is a very beautiful old village, perched on the southern edge of the high Plateau de Vaucluse. The stone buildings built in tight against the base of the cliffs and those perched on the rocks above, including the 12th-century castle, are made of an beige stone that glows orange in the morning sun. The view from the village is a southern panorama out across fields and forests and small perched villages to the Montagne du Luberon.
Gordes is one of the Most Beautiful Villages (Plus Beaux Villages) of France.
• Market day Tue.
Behind the village (to the north), small roads lead into the rocks and valleys and forests of the Plateau de Vaucluse, with the picturesque Abbaye de Sénanque only 4 km away, yet isolated in its little valley.
Beauty is a Pain. Take a trip to Gordes in the winter or early spring and you'll see the beautiful village, the amazing views and the lovely, rocky and forested countryside. You'll also see several large hotels, neat and discreet, but indicative of the disadvantage of any beautiful site: the summer crowds are thick here with a very large number of tourists.
Gordes is also a popular summer residence for artists and media and film people from Paris. Victor Vasarely has a Didactic Museum here as an extention to the Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence. The painter André Lhote also lived in Gordes, from 1939-1948.
Bories
Gordes is in a region of the Vaucluse with many of the interesting dry-stone buildings called bories. There are several in the countryside in the immediate vicinity of the village, including this famous trois soldats (left), and the large one in our [Photo 4].
Just beside Gordes is the Village de Bories, an ancient hamlet of all dry-stone buildings: an incredible collection of houses, walls, barns and a variety of other enclosures, including a period silk-making shop.
* Village des Bories: open 09:00-17:30; about 5 euros per adult