For 68 years Avignon, not Rome, was the capital of Latin Christendom. Seven French popes built a fortress-palace here, ringed the town with 4.3km of walls, and left behind cardinals' liveries, papal tombs and a bridge frozen mid-river.
Open 09:00–19:00 in summer, tickets €12 (€22 combined with the Pont). The 15,000m² fortress went up in two campaigns: Benedict XII's austere Palais Vieux (1335) and Clement VI's lavish Palais Neuf (1342–52). The HistoPad tablet is included.
Romanesque, consecrated 1111, sitting directly above the palace on the rock. Inside are the Gothic tomb of John XXII (d. 1334, the second Avignon pope) and a 12th-century marble bishop's throne. Free entry, closed 12:00–14:00 on some days.
The former archbishops' palace, built 1318 for Cardinal Arnaud de Via, now holds 327 Italian primitive paintings from the Campana collection plus Avignon-school panels. Open 10:00–13:00 and 14:00–18:00, closed Tuesdays. €6.
4.3km of papal ramparts raised 1355–1370 by Innocent VI against the mercenary Grandes Compagnies. Thirty-nine towers survive; Viollet-le-Duc restored them in the 1860s and, controversially, added crenellations that were never there.
Housed in the 1741 Hôtel de Villeneuve-Martignan, founded on physician Esprit Calvet's 1810 bequest. Egyptian, Greek and Gallo-Roman antiquities sit alongside French painting to 1900. Open 10:00–13:00, 14:00–18:00, closed Tuesdays.
The Carrière, Avignon's walled Jewish quarter from 1226, where Jews under papal protection were locked in nightly. The 1846 neoclassical rotunda synagogue by Joffroy replaced the medieval one lost to fire in 1845 — one of France's oldest communities.
Across the Rhône, the French crown's answer to the papal city: a 14th-century royal fortress built by John the Good facing Avignon, then papal-Provençal territory. Fort €6, abbey gardens €7. Twin drum towers guard the gate.
Founded 1352 by Innocent VI, who is buried in the church — once the largest Carthusian monastery in France, with three cloisters and 24 monks' cells. Sold off as national property in 1792 and squatted for a century before restoration.
The lane grid between the Palais and the Rhône where cardinals built their livrées — private palace-residences — in the 1340s. Later the Roma quarter, largely rebuilt in the 1970s; the Livrée Ceccano on rue Laboureur survives as the city library.
The Sorgue canal, dug by the popes in the 14th century, powered the indienne cloth-printing mills that made Avignon rich from 1650 to 1850. Four wooden wheels remain on the cobbled lane, along with the Gothic Chapelle des Pénitents Gris of 1527.
Two 18th-century private mansions, the Hôtels de Caumont and Montfaucon, converted in 2000 to hold Yvon Lambert's donated collection. The building history is the draw: intact aristocratic staircases and a courtyard behind a plain façade. €10.
Built over the Roman forum; the 14th-century Tour de l'Horloge with its jacquemart figures is embedded in the 1845 town hall. The Opéra Grand Avignon of 1847 faces it, and Jean Vilar launched the Festival d'Avignon on this square in 1947.