12 Unforgettable Things to Do in Avignon, the Walled City of Popes
Avignon fits an outrageous amount inside 4.3 kilometres of medieval rampart. A Gothic palace the size of a small mountain. A bridge that quit halfway across the Rhône and got a nursery rhyme as a consolation prize. Nine popes' worth of history, an oyster counter that opens before you're properly awake, wine those same popes planted 18 km up the road, and a July theatre festival that briefly doubles the town.
And it's close. Just 2h40 from Paris Gare de Lyon on the TGV — book it on SNCF Connect and you can be through the gate before lunch. (One trap: the fast trains stop at Avignon TGV, 4 km south of the walls, not at Avignon Centre. More on that at the bottom.)
Here's what to actually do once you're inside the ramparts. Reorder as you like. Skip almost nothing.
1. Give the Palais des Papes a full two hours
This is the largest Gothic palace on earth — 15,000 square metres of it — and it was the seat of nine popes when the papacy decamped from Rome to Avignon between 1309 and 1377. Entry runs about €12, or roughly €17.50 (around $19) bundled with the bridge. Doors open at 9AM. Go then; the palace absorbs crowds badly once the coaches arrive — the same early-doors discipline that makes Mont-Saint-Michel bearable in high season.
Here's the thing about the Palais that nobody warns you: it's nearly empty inside. The Revolution auctioned off almost every furnishing, so you're walking through stripped stone. The fix is the Histopad AR tablet that comes with your ticket — hold it up and it rebuilds the frescoes, tapestries and tiled floors around you, room by room. Actually use it.
Don't leave without finding the Chambre du Cerf, the pope's private study, painted floor to ceiling with hunting and fishing scenes. Not a saint in sight in a papal bedroom. It's the most human room in the building.
2. Walk out onto the bridge that stops
The Pont Saint-Bénézet — the "Pont d'Avignon" of the song — was begun in 1177 and once ran 22 arches across the Rhône. Four survive. The river took the rest, over and over, until the city finally gave up rebuilding it in the 1600s. Entry is about €5, or free with your combined palace ticket. Give it 30 to 45 minutes.
The nursery rhyme has everyone dancing sur le pont — on the bridge. They didn't. The dancing actually happened on the island below, which you can see clearly from the deck. The short audio guide is worth the 20 minutes for exactly this kind of correction.
3. Catch sunset from the Rocher des Doms
Straight above the palace sits a clifftop garden with a full sweep over the Rhône, the broken bridge and Villeneuve on the far bank. It's free, open daily from 7:30AM, and it's the best sunset spot in the city. Give it half an hour and arrive with light to spare.
Better still, it's barely a tourist site. You'll share it with locals walking dogs, parents pushing prams, and a duck pond. You've paid for nothing and you're looking at the best view in Avignon.
4. Eat oysters standing up at Les Halles
The covered market hides behind a 600-square-metre living green wall of 15,000 plants. It's open Tuesday to Sunday, 6AM to 1:30PM, closed Mondays, free to walk into. Come hungry.
Do what the market porters do: eat oysters standing at the seafood counter with a glass of Côtes du Rhône before 10AM — around €12 for a half-dozen. Grab tapenade from Aux Délices du Luberon to carry home. And if it's a Saturday, plant yourself at the front at 11AM for "La Petite Cuisine des Halles," where a local chef cooks a free demonstration and you taste the result.
5. Taste the Rhône Valley without leaving town
Le Carré du Palais is a grand old bank building on Place de l'Horloge, now the Rhône Valley's wine school and bar. Flights start around €12. Ask them to pour a Châteauneuf-du-Pape next to a Gigondas and you'll taste the day trip you're about to take — the popes planted Châteauneuf 18 km north and it pours in every bar in town. If these southern Rhône reds win you over, Bordeaux is the natural next stop on any French wine tour.
6. Wander Rue des Teinturiers at dusk
The old dyers' street is cobbles, plane trees and four surviving waterwheels still turning in a channel of the Sorgue that once powered the cloth mills. This is the one quarter that still feels like it belongs to its residents — bars, students, no coaches.
Check the board at Cinéma Utopia in the old school building. Arthouse films, subtitled and not, around €7. In July this street becomes the beating heart of the Festival OFF and its 1,500-plus fringe shows.
7. Cross the river to Villeneuve-lès-Avignon
Almost nobody bothers, which is exactly the reason to. Take Orizo bus 5 (about €1.40, 20 minutes) to the "city of cardinals," where papal officials built villas deliberately outside the pope's jurisdiction. Climb the Tour Philippe-le-Bel (~€6) and from the top you'll get the definitive shot of Avignon's walls, palace and broken bridge from the outside — the photograph you've been failing to take for days.
Fort Saint-André (~€6) adds a rampart walk and terraced, half-ruined abbey gardens that usually hold about four other people. If the walled-city habit has taken hold by then, Toledo's ramparts do the same thing in Spain — a river loop instead of a bend in the Rhône, a cathedral instead of a palace.
8. Take a Roman day trip to the Pont du Gard
Twenty-five kilometres west stands a three-tier Roman aqueduct bridge, 49 metres tall — the highest the Romans ever built, assembled around 50 AD without a drop of mortar. Entry is about €9.50 (roughly $10.50) including parking and museum. Give it half a day.
Everyone stops at the first viewpoint, so keep climbing the marked Rive Droite path for the shot looking straight down the length of the arches. In summer, swim in the Gardon underneath — the water's cold and looking up is the entire point. Car-free? The Lio bus A15 runs from Avignon in about 45 minutes for around €2, but check the timetable the night before; there are only a handful of services.
9. Drink where the popes planted the vines
Châteauneuf-du-Pape is 18 km north and there's no useful train, so take a half-day minibus tour from the tourist office on Cours Jean Jaurès — around €65 to €90, driver included, three or four domaine visits booked for you. Take the tour, because then everyone gets to taste.
Book a proper estate: Domaine de Beaurenard has been family-run since 1695; Château La Nerthe is the oldest in the appellation, reached down an avenue of cypress. Ask how many of the 13 permitted grape varieties they actually pick. Most lean on Grenache and will tell you exactly why — those fist-sized rounded stones (galets roulés) in the vineyards bank the day's heat and push the wine to 14.5 percent. The same valley plays an entirely different game upstream, where the northern Rhône around Lyon bets almost everything on a single grape, Syrah, grown on granite terraces.
10. Ride the free ferry to the Île de la Barthelasse
From Porte de l'Oulle, a free navette fluviale crosses to the largest river island in Europe in five minutes — roughly 10AM to 6PM, later in summer. Walk the Chemin de la Barthelasse along the bank and you'll find the postcard: the palace and the bridge together, framed from the water. Then do nothing under a poplar until the light goes.
11. Duck into the free municipal museums
Here's an Avignon quirk worth exploiting: the city-run museums have free permanent collections, which is genuinely unusual in France. Musée Calvet on Rue Joseph Vernet is an 18th-century mansion with a plane-tree courtyard, Vernet seascapes and a Soutine. Musée Lapidaire on Rue de la République is a Jesuit chapel stacked with Roman stone — go for one object, the Tarasque of Noves, a Celtic monster with severed heads under its paws. Both closed Tuesdays.
If you'll pay for one museum, make it the Musée du Petit Palais (~€6, closed Tuesdays) at the end of the palace square: the largest holding of Italian primitives outside Italy and an early Botticelli, reliably empty while hundreds queue next door.
12. Eat dinner where Avignon actually eats
Skip Place de l'Horloge for dinner — it's the one square in town where locals never eat. Head to Place des Corps-Saints instead, a plane-tree square where the city genuinely turns up. L'Agapé does a serious modern Provençal menu around €35 to €45; Ginette et Marcel next door is the cheap-and-charming option — tartines and a pastis under €20.
For the old Avignon repertoire — daube, brandade, meringue glacée — book a day ahead at La Fourchette, 17 Rue Racine, the Hiély family bistro with walls hung in forks, around €35. Closed weekends.
Pro Tip
Get from the TGV to the walls the smart way. Fast trains from Paris land at Avignon TGV, 4 km south of the old town — not Avignon Centre. The "Virgule" shuttle train links the two in five minutes for about €1.90 and is timed to the TGVs. A taxi for the same hop runs around €15. Don't walk it; there's no pleasant route. We untangle every station, shuttle and ticket question in our first-timer's Avignon Q&A.
Buy the combined ticket. The Palais des Papes and Pont Saint-Bénézet together cost about €17.50 — less than the two bought separately (~€12 and ~€5). Base yourself intra-muros, inside the ramparts, and almost everything on this list becomes a walk. Move fast at the palace, slow everywhere else, and let Avignon set the pace after that.
