About Provence Beyond
The world's oldest, largest (and best) website about Provence
Provence Beyond is about the South of France, to prepare for a trip or for armchair visitors. Beyond is about the places beyond the normal tourist attractions of Provence and the French Riviera. The small perched villages and sites of the "back country". Mountains, gorges, river valleys, lakes and wilderness parks.
About Beyond | Beyond History | Birth of Beyond | Contact | Privacy |
A private, one-man website, from hobby to full-time activity
ProvenceBeyond (aka "Beyond The French Riviera") is a completely private, unfunded website. Beyond went on-line in Oct 1995, as a small personal project to share our passion with back-country villages and nature of Provence. The web grew, expanded and improved, until it took on a life of its own. Beyond is not part of any government, group, organization, town or tourist office.
We have received comments that Beyond is too big to have been created by one person. Well, we've been at it a long time since 1995. Oftimes working night and day for days, or weeks, on end.
Beyond Information is First-Hand
If you're reading it in Beyond, we've been there, we've seen it and sampled it, we've photographed it, and we're talking about our own impressions. We do include reference information from outside sources, such a population and historical facts (we weren't there ourselves in the Middle Ages). We occasionally include partial information from Beyond Readers and even the Wikipedia now and again, and we're careful to acknowledge each instance of "outside sources".
While we make an effort not to "bad mouth" the places we like the least, we do give an honest view of our impressions and a visitor's view of the places we visit.
Provence Beyond has information about ...
How to find places (maps) and how to get there (travel).
History - of a region that was old when the Romans arrived.
Provencal gastronomy, local recipes and food dictionaries.
French and regional sports: cycling and petanque, climbing and diving, ...
French wines, with explanations and information.
Photos are All Original, All Beyond
All of the tens of thousands of photos in Provence Beyond are original, personal photographs of Provence and the South of France.
The quality varies, partly due to circumstances of the moment and partly due to the progress of photographic technology. We began with film cameras and converting film to digital, then progressed through the very first, poor-quality digital cameras to the current, excellent mid-range digital single-lens-reflex cameras.
We sacrifice some quality to keep the images small enough to allow faster page-loading times.