THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGES OF THE LUBERON, AND HOW TO CHOOSE
Gordes, Roussillon, Bonnieux, Ménerbes,
and the art of not seeing them all in one day
The Luberon has a reputation for having the most beautiful villages in France, and the awkward truth is that the reputation is deserved, which makes choosing between them a genuine problem. They are close together, they are all lovely, and the great mistake, the one nearly everyone makes on the first trip, is to try to tick off six of them between breakfast and dinner. Do that and they blur into a single golden smear of narrow lanes and postcard racks, and you come home having seen everything and remembered nothing.
So here is our advice up front: pick two, maybe three, in a day, and give each one enough time to stop being a photograph and start being a place. Below are the ones we return to, and, more usefully, who each of them is for.
GORDES, the showstopper
Gordes is the one on the postcards and it earns it. The village stacks up the side of a hill in tiers of pale stone, and the classic view, from the little pull-off on the road as you approach from the valley, is one of those sights that makes people go quiet in the car. Climb to the château terrace for the long view over the Luberon and the Sénanque valley, and time your visit for late afternoon, when the light does something to the limestone that we are not sure any photograph has ever fully captured.
The catch is that everyone knows all this, so Gordes can feel busy and a little polished. Come early or come late, buy your provisions and take your terrace view, and do not judge the whole of Provence by its most famous face. Nearby, and worth the short detour, is the Abbaye de Sénanque, the Cistercian abbey in its fold of the hills, most photographed when the lavender in front of it is in bloom in early summer.
Who it's for: the first-timer who wants the definitive view, and anyone willing to work around the crowds to get it.
ROUSSILLON, the red one
Roussillon is built on and out of ochre, and it is unlike anywhere else in the region. The buildings run from butter yellow through orange to a deep blood red, and just outside the village the old ochre quarries, the Sentier des Ocres, let you walk through a small canyon of the stuff that looks more like Utah than France. It is the village that most surprises people, precisely because it breaks the pale-stone spell the others cast.
Who it's for: anyone who likes their beauty with a jolt of color, families who'll enjoy the ochre trail, and travelers who want one village that feels genuinely different from the rest.
BONNIEUX, the layered one
Bonnieux climbs a hillside in a tumble of levels, with an old church at the top reached by a long stone stair and a view from it across the Calavon valley toward Lacoste and, on a clear day, Mont Ventoux. It is a working village more than a showpiece, with good bakeries and a proper restaurant or two, and it rewards the simple pleasure of climbing slowly to the top and looking back at where you started.
Who it's for: the walker, the person who prefers a village that feels lived-in over one that feels curated.
MÉNERBES, the quiet aristocrat
Ménerbes is the one Peter Mayle made quietly famous, a long thin village along a ridge, less trafficked than Gordes, with a discreet, slightly patrician calm to it. There is a truffle museum, good views on both sides, and the sense of a place that knows exactly how lovely it is and feels no need to mention it.
Who it's for: the reader who came with A Year in Provence in the bag, and anyone chasing the unhurried version of the Luberon.
HOW TO ACTUALLY CHOOSE
If you have one day, we would pair Gordes early with Roussillon after, for the contrast of pale stone and burning ochre, with a long market lunch in between. If you have two, add Bonnieux and Ménerbes at the slow pace they deserve, and leave time to get lost on the small roads between them, because the countryside itself, the vines and the cedar and the limestone, is as much the point as any one village.
And whichever you choose, arrive early or linger late. The middle of the day belongs to the tour coaches. The mornings and the evenings, when the light is low and the lanes are empty, belong to you.