If you are looking for an undiscovered part of Provence, then you can forget about Le Barroux. Apart from the fact that both Petrarch and Pope Clement V spent their summers nearby in the 14th century, the pretty hilltop village topped by its disproportionately large castle has been the holiday destination of members of the British social stratosphere for generations. The Anglo-French descendants of Axel Munthe, the Swedish author of the spectacularly successful Story of San Michele — perhaps the first example of escapist travel literature — have a very beautiful house in the village, as did Prince Charles’s godmother. The Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury is just down the hill.
It is not difficult to see why. The département, Vaucluse, derives its name from vallis clausa or ‘closed valley’, the name given to the largest spring in France at Fontaine de Vaucluse nearby. But the term is also understood to refer to the numerous subterranean grottoes which provide water even during the summer. Irrigated as well by rivers large and small, from the Rhône to the Sorgue and the Nesque, and rained on profusely by the clouds which gather over Mont Ventoux and the stunningly delicate Dentelles de Montmirail, Le Barroux and the surrounding countryside are as green and lush in August as on a fresh spring morning. They have none of the heavy and dusty stillness of the neighbouring Var, where the dog days of summer are more a source of suffering than pleasure.
Even before the 14th century, the area was celebrated and coveted. The Comtat Venaissin, as it is known, was ceded to the Pope by the King of France in 1274 and remained a papal fiefdom until its incorporation back into France at the French Revolution.
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