🇫🇷 France
Avignon
Avignon (population 95,000 — the prefecture of the Vaucluse department in Provence, southeastern France) is one of the most historically significant cities in medieval European history: the seat of the Papacy from 1309 to 1377 (the "Avignon Papacy" or "Babylonian Captivity of the Church" — the 68-year period when seven successive popes ruled Christendom from Avignon rather than Rome: the period began when the French-born Pope Clement V (1305–1314), influenced by the French King Philip IV, refused to move to Rome and established the papal court in Avignon (at the time, a papal territory (the Comtat Venaissin) within the Holy Roman Empire but adjacent to the French Kingdom): the Avignon popes built the most extraordinary Gothic palace in Europe (the Palais des Papes — the largest Gothic building in the world, larger than the Vatican Apostolic Palace), acquired the finest art collection in Europe (including works by Simone Martini — the Sienese painter who lived and worked in Avignon from 1340 until his death in 1344 — and by Matteo Giovannetti, the master of the painted rooms of the Papal Palace), and made Avignon the most powerful, most wealthy and most culturally sophisticated city in Europe during the 14th century). The surviving monuments of the Avignon Papacy — the Palais des Papes, the Pont d'Avignon (the Pont Saint-Bénézet — the medieval bridge of the famous nursery rhyme "Sur le Pont d'Avignon"), the Cathedral of Notre-Dame des Doms (the Romanesque cathedral above the Palais des Papes), and the circuit of the medieval city walls (the most complete surviving medieval urban wall in France) — are collectively listed as UNESCO World Heritage (1995). The Avignon Festival (Festival d'Avignon — the most important theater festival in the world, founded by Jean Vilar in 1947 and held every July in the Palais des Papes courtyard and throughout the city) has made Avignon the theater capital of the world during its three weeks each summer.