Roussillon

Roussillon is classified among the most beautiful villages of France and a part of the perimeter Regional natural park of Luberon.

Les ochres with the multiple colors enchants the glance in any season.

From Roussillon, you will go to discover all Vaucluse, will visit Luberon, will appreciate the charm of its perched villages, like in particular Joucas.

Roussillon welcomes you all year with the smile, that you are amateurs of hiking, ballades in shift, with bicycle or foot, or if you came just to stroll in the streets of the country of the colors

Do not miss: the path of ochres and the academy of ochres and the color.

In Provence, between Luberon and Monts of Vaucluse, Roussillon scintillates under a very ocrée light.

The village is classified among most beautiful of France, it does not resemble any other. Located in the middle of the most important layer of the ochre of the world, it clamp its mineral singularity by an astonishing palette blazing.

By traversing its lanes and its staircases, by contemplating his frontages, often simple and naturally beautiful, one admires more the result of know-how than thousand-year-old. Here the man spontaneously knew to melt himself in splendour of a generous nature.

The ochre is everywhere: in the landscapes that one cannot forget, on the walls of the houses, coated in a traditional way, but as in the heart of the men, as the invaluable pigment made live jusqu' in the middle of the 20th century.

This presence, you will fully feel it by borrowing the Path of Ochres, arranged and marked out, which will lead you to the " Roadway of the géants" , in the middle of the chimneys of fairies and a succession of imposing sites carved by water, wind and the hand of the man.

n Roussillon, you can discover what was the venture industrial country, by visiting the Academy of ochres and the color, with the old Mathieu factory, on D 104, in direction of Apt. They are organized the visits, training courses and technical informations.

The ochre, used since prehistory, exploited since l' occupation of Provence by the Romans, truly became an industrial product that thanks to the intuition of roussillonnais Jean-Etienne Astier. This is it which, at the end of the 18th century, had the idea to wash ochreous sands, to extract the pure pigment from it. Strongly competed with by the synthetic dyes, the natural ochre however remains, in some of its uses, an incomparable product.

Roussillon is not a historic site, in spite of its seniority.

This is not either a place of history, although more a memory remains engraved in its architecture.

Thsi is before a whole magic place, where combinations charged by oxides burst colors of an infinite variety, on the landscape around, the frontages of the imbricated houses, or in horn the eye on a gate, a wall.

Roussillon is visited calmly, because with each turning, the eye hangs a detail suitable to encourage with the dream.

Place du Pasquier: was successively place of pasture, then place with the seven annual fairs, it was still the court of the school (become pharmacy), before being carpark and access to the Social centre and Cultural.

• Place of Abbé-Avon: also called " the lower part of the furnace " , because in the rock dug to shelter a house, the furnace of the baker was, this small square bears the name d' an abbot who devoted himself during l' epidemic of plague of 1720. On the left, is the Happy Door.
• Belfry: old door of Castrum, strengthened enclosure, the belfry was altered at the 19th century, in bell-tower annexes the church. The first lane, on the left, makes it possible to gain the old covered way, which united two turns of the ramparts, where the name of the district of Bistourle. That constitutes a beautiful point of view on the village and the neighbourhoods.
• Place Pignotte: it draws its name from the alms of the " pinhotte " , distribution of bread rolls in the pine cone shape, instituted by the Pope Jean XXII in 1316.
• Place Forging mill: it could be the old court of the castle builds into 987, whose remain some vestiges and a small martyrdom.
• Count of the orientation: this is the culminating point of the village, where you discover a broad panorama of Luberon of the Mounts of Vaucluse.
• Church St Michel: the primitive church goes back to the 11th century and was located at the interior of the fortifications, vis-a-vis the castle. Very altered during times, in particular because of its situation at the edge of cliff, you will notice its frontage of 17th, its chorus 18th, works of Potevin of end of 18th and the baptismal funds, rules of Saint-Michel, Christ in cross.
• Place Town hall: beautiful houses of 18th and centers of the animation of the village.
• Place Post office: in a recess, a fountain remains which was used to water the cattle. * Fountain of the Naïades: it is below located the village, on the road of Saint-Saturnin.

• Ochre is a natural pigment mixed with sands with cliffs. The iron oxide colours it yellow with purplished. This mineral landscape was worked by the hand of the man and erosion.
• Two courses (short or long) allow you a 30 minutes visit to 60 minutes, but you can also contemplate it as a long time as you wish it… discrete desks mark out your course for explanations on geology, the flora, the history, the solid mass ocrier of Luberon…
• Protect with us this remarkable site classified by respecting the security instructions and benefit from this mineral voyage of 110 million years!

Paying entry

A whole procession of plants silicicolous, acidophiles and psammophile, opposing to calcareous Provence and prints with this landscape of Roussillon a great particularism.

The geological data play a paramount role in the natural organization. The chemical nature of the ground and its sandy physical character, contribute to the selection of the particular plant species of a great interest for the area of Luberon and the Provence average. You meet the forest associations where the coniferous trees dominate primarily, pine of Alep and maritime pine, woodland pine.

The original forest groupings, the oak groves with holm oaks and oaks pubescent cover discontinuous and very limited surfaces. Certain funds of small valleys lodge beautiful formations of white poplars and the chestnut is present there in a scattered way.

The intimacy of the underwoods is characterized by the quasi-exclusive predominance of the heather that the broom with brush and the fern eagle accompany occasionally. In discovered ground, these two heathers become invading and constitute the maquis.

You discover there associated, the cistus with sheet of bay-tree and the cistus with sage sheet.

Moreover, within the maquis, the herbaceous lawns or formations colonize small isolated clearings.

The wild orchises always make dream good number; in love with nature by the attraction of their flowers. Ochres constitute a high gathering place for this vegetable kingdom. On a hundred of the species living in France, one counts 39 of them on the territory of Luberon, of which 26 can meet in ochres.