TRAVELING IN STYLE : Good and Medieval : The Popes Left Their Palace in Avignon 600 Years Ago, but This Lively Provencal Capital Still Echoes With the Glorious Past

IT IMPOSES ITSELF THERE ON THE PROVENcal plain, with its insistent profile of crenelations and turrets. Avignon is a town that flaunts its past. And well it might, since it was once the capital of the Christian world.

Today, ramparts built to keep out invading hordes summon visitors instead, drawing them to the vast Place de l’Horloge, Avignon’s historic heart. Just up the street from this square is the Palais des Papes, the Palace of the Popes, a structure that commands obeisance--not a bow or genuflection, because the Popes have been gone for 600 years, but a tilt of the head to take it all in from top to bottom, and a swivel of the neck, too, to pan from side to side.

Downhill from the palace, separated from its sweeping esplanade in part by the rich and extravagant 17th-Century Hotel des Monnaies and the 19th-Century Banque de France, the place is the center of Avignon’s rich and varied street life. Here, sunlight and refreshment beckon, and jugglers and musicians compete for coins. Pick a cafe beneath the plane trees, selecting it for sun or shade or the color of its parasols, but mostly for the sight lines. Then order up a citron presse or a pastis to help wash down all the history you are about to consume.

But before reflecting on, say, the effects of the struggle between Pope and antipope and the Great Schism that ensued, enjoy the play of sunlight through the leaves and the way it flashes on ancient facades and washes with soft rosiness the tiled roofs, or appreciate the ocher flares at sunset. From early morning calm to late evening raucousness, there’s always something to see on the Place de l’Horloge. At the upper end, a children’s carousel, its belle epoque decor as exuberant as its clientele is kinetic, offers a cheerful backdrop. At the lower end, closer to the business quarters and the university, the comings and goings of students and shoppers provide a constant parade for those there for the show. Even in the dead of winter, when the mistral is whipping down the Rhone and the parasols are tied up tight to keep them from sailing off, the tourists come--English, German, Italian, American.

Historically, Avignon was a city of refuge, and some of the people who sought its protection were of questionable merit. Their presence seems to have left a mark on the place, giving it a liveliness and energy not common in placid Provence. Even the buskers competing for coins on the Place de l’Horloge add verve to Avignon.

When the time comes to move on from the square, drop by the Maison de Tourisme at 41 Cours Jean-Jaures, an easy walk, halfway between the lower end of the Place de l’Horloge and the train station. Inside its historic walls, Avignon is a maze, its streets tangled around tiny squares scattered throughout the center, and thus an overall city map is essential. The Maison de Tourisme provides them, and also maps to a series of walking tours through some of the city’s less-obvious neighborhoods--among them La Banasterie, notable for its elegant 17th- and 18th-Century private mansions, and the upscale boutiques between the Place Crillon and the Place de l’Horloge.

THE ORIGINS OF AVIGNON, roughly 370 miles southeast of Paris and 55 miles northwest of Marseille, date back to Neolithic times. Under the name Avenio, it was an important Roman colony and was subsequently held by the Visigoths, the Saracens and the Normans, among others. How it became the seat of the papacy owes as much to the ambitions of King Philip IV (1268-1314), called Phillippe le Bel, as to the feudal struggles between the powerful Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Rome.

Clement V, a Frenchman elected Pope in 1305, was apparently wary of those Roman intrigues and was certainly a tributary of King Philip, and he chose to exile the papacy to the Provencal countryside. After his death, his successor, John XXII, established the Holy See in what had been the quiet town of Avignon.

For Avignon, the effect was immediate. The papal presence introduced a century of wealth and intellectual brilliance. Its university became renowned. Two later Popes, Benedict XII and Clement VI, built the massive papal palace. Its links with Italy were artistic as well as religious, and such important painters as Simone Martini and Matteo Giovanetti left their marks on the walls. Even Giotto came, the Renaissance art historian Vasari tells us. Such was the power of the papal magnet.

But one of Avignon’s ties to Italy also foretold the end of its greatness. St. Catherine, after a trip from Siena that legend necessarily describes as perilous, came to Avignon in 1377 and successfully pleaded with Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome. (His successor, Urban VI, so displeased the French cardinals that they elected another Pope, or antipope, who came back to Avignon the following year. This was the beginning of the Great Schism of the West, which rent the church for nearly 40 years, pitting France’s Catholics against Italy’s in an intense religious struggle.)

Other entreaties must have been less temperate than Catherine’s. The Palace of the Popes is a fortress built into solid rock. This imposing consequence of papal ambitions is one of the most significant examples of 14th-Century Gothic architecture. Its grandeur is easily appreciated from the vast empty space in front of it, cleared out by a Pope who wanted to see his enemies coming. If this beefed-up citadel impresses people now, think of its effect on a medieval peasant just in from the fields. What better symbol than size, what better way to demonstrate the Church’s might, the Pope’s authority, the peasant’s fearful place in the order of things?

But only the palace’s shape, and what we know of its history, suggest its wondrous past. Its huge rooms are filled largely with imagination--the visitor’s own.

There are, however, marks on the wall: Martini’s frescoes decorate the Consistory, or Grand Council Chamber, on the ground floor and others by Giovanetti are found in the adjoining St. John’s Chapel. Upstairs in the enormous banquet hall (its size makes you wonder what they could have done in all that grandly wasted space) there is a magnificent series of 18th-Century Gobelin tapestries. But for charm, don’t miss the frescoes in the Stag Room on the third level . Entirely covering the walls, these depict such secular subjects as hunting and fishing and are considered important for the naturalistic sentiments they introduced.

At the upper end of the esplanade are two less-imposing structures, the cathedral of Notre-Dame-des-Doms, which is the oldest religious building in Avignon, and the Petit Palais.

A small, crenelated echo of the big palace, the Petit Palais, originally the residence of the Bishop of Avignon, now houses the city’s principal art museum, with its fine collection of Italian paintings from the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, as well as the most important of the local archeological discoveries.

The Petit Palais collection has been enhanced by a group of artworks brought to France from Italy in the late 19th Century. The Campana Collection is named for the man who assembled it, the Marchese Gian Pietro Campana di Cavelli, who ran Rome’s official pawn shop. In Italy, as in France, these were official sources of easy credit used by even the best families.

Il Marchese was an insatiable collector whose passion for art led him to confuse official receipts with his own. When the discrepancies were discovered, his treasures were seized and, in time, sold to Napoleon III. The emperor brought them to France, intending to establish a museum as a sort of competition for the Louvre. The Louvre directors would have none of that. They latched onto the best pieces and the rest were scattered around French provincial museums until the middle of this century, when the Campana collection was reassembled at Avignon, a logical site considering its medieval and Renaissance character.

Next to the cathedral, the Parc des Doms perches over the Rhone, at the site of the first prehistoric settlement here, exposed to the wind but high above the flood line. Between the river and the city, largely visible from the Parc des Doms, are the medieval ramparts of Avignon, stretching for nearly three miles. But outside this ring is the single ruin that the city is best known for--the broken-off bridge that generations of students have sung about in French classes: “ Sous le pont d’Avignon, on y danse tous en rond “--”Under the bridge of Avignon, we all dance in a ring.”

The origins of this folk song are hard to trace, but not the bridge’s legend. In the 12th Century, St. Benezet, described as a simple country priest, heard voices telling him to build a bridge across the Rhone. To prove that the inspiration was divine, he was accorded superhuman strength to hoist a large rock and lay it at the spot where the bridge was to go. (This was also the exact spot, archeologists tell us, where the Romans had earlier bridged the river).

The site of the bridge was inspired, because there the Rhone flows in two relatively narrow branches around the island called the Ile de Barthelasse. (On the island, by the way, is where the dancing referred to in the famous song actually took place--at the lively summertime cafes that used to be there.) St. Benezet’s ruins don’t even reach out to the island anymore. The bridge was swept away in successive floods, and only four arches have remained since 1668--yet another graceful monument to the city’s past.

Avignon kept a rare status even after the departure of the Popes. For four more centuries it belonged to the Catholic Church, a city protected by the Pope as a refuge for the righteous--and some who were not. The real significance of this protection, though, was commercial. Already a lively manufacturing center, the city turned into a free-trade zone, surrounded by France but exempt from restrictive French control.

This led to another of Avignon’s legacies. France in Louis XIV’s day developed a passion for the colorful textiles known as indiennes (so called because they were first imported from Asia). Hand-printed with wooden blocks, these cotton fabrics were soon imitated by French entrepreneurs. But two protectionist forces sought to counter this trend. The first were the manufacturers of France’s traditional fabrics. The second was Colbert, the king’s controller general of finance, who was determined to maintain the crown’s control over all commerce and industry, thus creating royal monopolies.

Avignon, not under French jurisdiction, became a logical center for flouting Colbert’s laws. The cloth printed here and destined to cross the Rhone as contraband used the colors and the designs that we think of today not as indienne but as Provencal--thanks in part to the boutiques of Pierre Deux and the like.

The Rue des Teinturiers (Street of Dyers), far distant in spirit from the bustle of the Place de l’Horloge, is still lined with vestiges of the textile trade. The Sorgue, Avignon’s other river, flows alongside, rippling around five waterwheels that are now rusted into stillness. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Sorgue was one long millrace, and these wheels powered factories employing as many as 500 workers. Now, I think of this shady street as a poetic calmative, a shelter against more than just the heat.

Don’t let Avignon’s wealth of history intimidate you. The Popes have been gone for 600 years, and Avignon is now a lively provincial capital--except that its province is Provence. And that makes for a lot of magic.

GUIDEBOOK: The Avignon Story

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for France is 33. French area codes are incorporated into the phone numbers, so no additional codes are needed from within France or abroad--unless calling from Paris, in which case 16 must be dialed before the number. All prices are approximate and are computed at a rate of 5 francs to the dollar. Hotel rates are for a double room for one night.

Getting there: Air France offers daily nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Paris. There are also three weekly nonstop flights on United Airlines and one each week on AOM French Airlines. Numerous other carriers have connecting flights to Paris. From Paris, the TGV, France’s high-speed train, makes the four-hour-and-40-minute trip from the city’s Gare de Lyon several times a day. One-way fares are $88 first-class, $58 second-class.

Where to stay: Hotel d’Europe, 12 Place Crillon, telephone 9082-6692, fax 9085-4366. A classic whose recent restoration has put it into near-luxury class. The restaurant, La Vielle Fontaine, merits its single Michelin star. There is a paradisiacal courtyard, and dinner there in the summer is a delight. Rates: $115- $395. Hotel de la Mirande, 4 Place Amirande, tel. 9085-9393, fax 9086-2685. For comfort and elegance, this 18-room hotel is probably the new benchmark, recently installed in one of Avignon’s most beautiful private mansions, a cardinal’s palace from the era of the Popes. Rates: $250-$460. Across the Rhone: Le Prieure, 7 Place du Chapitre, Villeneuve-les-Avignon, tel. 9025-1820, fax 9025-4539 (for reservations from North America, (800) 677-3524). Located in and around a 14th-Century palace, this is another longtime favorite of regular visitors to the area. The restaurant (with service in summer on another wonderful terrace) is a classic. Rates: $105-$355. On the Ile de Barthelasse: La Ferme, Chemin des Bois, tel. 9082-5753, fax 9027-1547. A renovated farm offers a rural setting within 10 minutes’ drive from Avignon. The rooms are relatively cheerful. Rate: $75.

Where to eat: Hiely-Lucullus, 5 Rue de la Republic, tel. 9086-1707, fax 9086-3238. This classic’s downgrading by Michelin several years ago (from two stars to one) must have had a salutary effect, for it’s better than ever. The cuisine is Provencal in inspiration and the service is attentive. An excellent list of Rhone Valley wines. Christian Etienne, 10-12 Rue Mons, tel. 9086-1650, fax 9086-6709. There are fireworks here, both in the decor and on the plate. La Fourchette II, 17 Rue Racine, tel. 9085-2093. There’s good value in this cozy restaurant. Cafe des Artistes, Place Crillon, tel. 9082-6316. The best thing in this ‘30s-style bistro may be the activity in the square outside. But food isn’t everything.

For further information: Contact the French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 303, Beverly Hills, 90212; (900) 990-0040 (live operators answer calls, but there is a charge of 50 cents per minute).