Vaucluse: Art and Heritage Guide to Provence's Cultural Department

Vaucluse owes its cultural weight to Avignon, seat of the papacy in the 14th century, whose Centre historique d'Avignon: Palais des papes, ensemble épiscopal et Pont d'Avignon was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1995. The city's museum landscape reflects this legacy alongside more personal collections: the Musée Calvet and its annex, the Musée Lapidaire, housed in a former Jesuit chapel, sit not far from the Musée Angladon, built around the collection of couturier Jacques Doucet.

Further north, Orange preserves one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in existence: the Théâtre antique et ses abords et « Arc de Triomphe » d'Orange, also UNESCO-listed, still used for performances nearly two thousand years after its construction. Vaison-la-Romaine complements this antique heritage with its own excavated town centre and the Musée archéologique Théo Desplans, built directly on the site it interprets.

Contemporary art has its own foothold in Avignon through the Collection Lambert, while decorative arts of the 17th and 18th centuries are the focus of the Musée Louis Vouland.

Avignon's intra-muros core concentrates most of the department's major institutions, from the Musée du Petit Palais, adjoining the Palais des papes, to the Muséum d'histoire naturelle Esprit Requien. The Musée juif comtadin and the Musée Jean Garcin 39-45: l'appel de la liberté round out the city's historical offerings beyond the papal narrative.

Carpentras holds the Bibliothèque-musée Inguimbertine, set in a former hôtel-Dieu and combining a rare book collection with fine art. Valréas, in the northern Enclave des Papes, groups three sites in one town: the Château de Simiane, the Musée du Cartonnage et de l'Imprimerie, and the Musée archéologique et de pays.

The Luberon villages have become a gallery circuit in their own right. Roussillon, known for its ochre cliffs, hosts several exhibition spaces including Art Gallery Contemporary Tapiézo, Comptoir des arts, the Galerie Porte Heureuse and Atelier Regards d'Artistes. Nearby Bonnieux pairs the Fondation Blachere with galerie dans la lune, while Lourmarin offers the Galerie Catherine Dumas Perrot and Galerie Le Hangart.

L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, famous for its antiques trade, contributes Campredon art & image and the Galerie Atelier Acmaa, while Vaison-la-Romaine adds Galerie Zanella and La Station Galerie to the roster of village galleries.

Petrarch spent formative years in Vaucluse, and the Musée-bibliothèque Pétrarque in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse commemorates his time near the source of the Sorgue, one of the sites long associated with his poetry.

Jacques Doucet's role as a collector rather than a maker of art gives the Musée Angladon its particular character in Avignon, assembling works gathered through the couturier's personal taste rather than a single school or period.