Cavaillon

In the middle of the most beautiful sites of Provence, between Avignon, Alpilles and Mount-Ventoux, in the Regional natural park of Luberon, Cavaillon are a city where natural, inheritance, soil and traditions ard combined harmoniously.

The history and the inheritance, still too often ignored this city, deserves the turning.

Traverse the paths of discovered old center and hill; you will visit l' one of the most beautiful synagogues of Europe (XVIII) and the museum Jew-comtadin, the Cathedral and its cloister of XII century, the Vault of the Large-Convent, the museum of  hospital,  Arc Romain, the hermitage and the Saint-Jacob Vault.

In Cavaillon, nature and center of life are côtoient, you can walk and slacken you with some steps of the centre town, in the odorous scrubland of the Saint-Jacob Hill, then to benefit from the user-friendliness of the malls and the shaded places.

This is under the protection of the Saint-Jacob vault, built at the 12th century at the top of the hill of the same name, as the town of Cavaillon is placed: it chose for armorial bearings, the sight since the old center of the bedside of the vault and the Tower of the Trowel aujourd' today disappeared.

In front of it, this is in Notre-Dame and Saint-Véran that Cavaillon, city episcopal since the 4th century after Jesus-Christ, dedicates a cathedral. This one knows many states until the 13th century when it is increased and devoted by Innocent IV. Of Romance style, it was bordered in the south of a cloister of 14th, a small Saint-Pierre church, palate episcopal and in the east chapter and prévôté.

Today, this is a public school which is next to the cathedral and its cloister. With the origin of a plan with single nave, the cathedral increased side chapels quickly. At the interior, the decoration, taken again at the 17th century after the wars of religion, is composed of carved and gilded woodworks,  works of Mignard and Parrocel. Sometimes the murals come to supplement it with 19th, take again vegetable reasons in echo with the external decoration.

The frontage of Hotel God located against the wall northern of the city and close to the only preserved door, the vault of Hospital, built in 1755, an about sixty years after that of the Large Convent, wants to be more modest proportions, decorated with vegetable reasons underlining l' schedule frontage. Currently, the vault shelters an archaeological museum created with the initiative of a family cavaillonnaise, the Jouve family.

 The presence of a synagogue in Cavaillon is indissociable of the history of the Jews of the Pope.

Expelled of the Kingdom of France, the Jewish communities took refuge in Comtat Venaissin, pontifical state independent of 13th at the 18th century. There, they profited from a quite relative tolerance of the popes: if right of worship and s' to manage was recognized to them, the members of the community were to carry a distinctive sign and could not reach the many trades apart from those authorized by the pope, and owed, as of the 15th century, food in a closed street the night.

At the 17th century, this measurement is reinforced puisqu' it limits to four the places of residence communities: Cavaillon, l' Isle-on-the-Sorgue, Carpentras, Avignon. Life in the career is organized around the synagogue.

The discovered circuit of the Old Center begins with  Arc Romain, near to Tourist office, at a place which was, until at the 19th century, out the walls. Probably built in Year 10 after Jesus-Christ in the middle of the ancient city - current site of the cathedral it was moved at last century for monumentaliser the new place of the Field, where the market was held daily with early products.

With the Arc, this is the evocation of the Roman presence which - the decoration vegetable than warlike proves it - presence establishes carefully which is still read in the town planning and in the objects of the daily life presented to the Museum of Hospital.

In the middle of Cavaillon,  Hotel-of-city, rebuilt at the 18th century with the site of the old house communal and covered by a canopy at the 19th century, affirmed like a strong point of the capacity shared with the bishop, sitting at the close cathedral.

With Grand' Street, main axis since the Antiquity and jusqu' with the 19th century, this is more the frontages d' private mansions of 16th and 18th centuries which offer to the glance.