Avignon (UNESCO # 2)

Avignon was the next stop on our road trip, and we wanted to make sure to get there in time to attend Mass at the Cathedral, part of the ensemble that makes up the UNESCO site. We left at 8am and made it to Avignon just as the clouds were threatening rain. We parked the car in a large lot just outside the city wall – the historical center of Avignon has a defensive wall around it – and made our way in towards the Cathedral… or at least what I thought was the 

Cathedral and Palace together

Cathedral. I didn’t realize that the Cathedral and the Pope’s Palace were all connected, so we ended up at the wrong church just as it started to rain. We figured out we weren’t at the Cathedral and headed back out to find it. 
Once I realized the two monuments were connected, we found it easily and got there just as Mass began, only a few minutes late. The Mass was lovely, and I particularly enjoyed the Homily, which was on the subject of the Holy Spirit – being Pentecost Sunday and all – and how we are able to see manifestations of all 3 elements of the Holy Trinity within ourselves.

After the service, we stayed a little bit to see the church, and then headed out to see what else there was to see – after a coffee/crêpe break, of course! The UNESCO site is technically the “Historic Centre of Avignon: Papal Palace, Episcopal Ensemble and Avignon Bridge” and we were on to the Papal Palace. It’s known as “the most well-fortified house in the world” and was chosen by UNESCO because it is “one of the most outstanding examples of medieval architecture in the world” according to the UNESCO description.

Well fortified!!

Why is it the most well-fortified house in the world? Because of the people it was built for and their position: the Popes’ Palace was built, you guessed it, for Popes. But the Popes live(d) in Rome! Well, back in the medieval times, the seat of power didn’t stay in Rome at all times. It was an “itinerant” and would reside in different cities that made up its states. When the archbishop of Bordeaux became Pope Clement V, he decided to have the Papal seat stay in Avignon more or less permanently. He was able to systematically promote French Cardinals until they were a majority in the Sacred College. He hoped this would make it so that the Popes to be elected in the foreseeable future would be French. His plan worked and the next 6 Popes were French – ending the domination of Italian Popes. They all decided to keep the Papacy in Avignon, making Avignon basically the most important city in the known world for about 70 years. Gregory VI was crowned in Avignon, was determined to diplomatically bring together feuding heads of state all around him and brought the Papal Seat back to Rome in 1377.

They actually only recently found this hidden
chamber under the floor of a bedroom in the Palace!!

He died in Rome a year later, and that began the “Western Schism” when a faction of dissident Cardinals protested the election of an Italian Pope (after 70+ years of French Popes reigning) by electing their own Pope, Clement VII. He and his successor both resided in the Palace at Avignon. The second Avignon Pope, Benedict XIII, was confined to the palace that was constantly under siege. He was able to flee and took refuge with a sympathetic monarch, the King of Aragon.

We learned all of this as we visited different rooms in the palace. The interesting thing is that the rooms are all pretty much empty! Usually they’d be furnished with period-specific pieces, but these were all empty. It worked out well though, because this place gets an insane amount of people visiting each year and the upkeep would be near impossible. The empty rooms allow for more people to visit, and we were still able to see what it looked like in the 1300s when the Popes lived there! How, you may ask? Great question! They gave us “Histopads” to use as our guides. These tablets are SO COOL. Here’s a video I took to show you: 

 In the audio we learned that peacocks were an expensive delicacy that only the extremely wealthy ate. After they were cooked, they were redressed with their feathers so they looked nice and exotic while on the table. When we went into the kitchen area, the audio talked about how there would be a large section of hot coals in the middle that would be cooking meat – which you can see in the video below.

It’s not easy to take a video of a tablet while walking around and holding the tablet and the phone, but I thought it was so cool and wanted to show you the newest thing in tourism technology. They also had this cool app at the end where you could take a selfie and it would put your face in a medieval image... here I am as a medieval maiden :) 

 Stay tuned for my next blog, which will be about the last of the 3 parts of the Avignon UNESCO Sites, plus the Pont du Gard, which is a separate UNESCO site about 20 minutes from Avignon.