Roussillon, the village made of fire

The walking route (7 stops)

1. 1

   Place de la Mairie ★

   The first canvas: nearly twenty shades of ochre dug from the ground itself, shifting hour by hour. The only village in France where the houses and the landscape are made of the very same material.

2. 2

   Tour de l'Horloge (Castrum) ★

   The old gate of the fortified castrum, its wrought-iron bell cage pierced to let the mistral through — and the legend of soil dyed red by a broken heart.

3. 3

   Église Saint-Michel

   The one place in the village with no colour: cool grey stone at the highest point, the landmark you could see from the fields.

4. 4

   Belvédère du Castrum — table d'orientation ★

   The whole Luberon laid out to Mont Ventoux — and, just below the railing, the orange wound of the old quarries that made Roussillon famous.

5. 5

   Sentier des Ocres — Chaussée des Géants ★

   A corridor of glowing cliffs cut through the old open-air quarries: half landscape, half industrial ruin. Mind your shoes — the ochre stains and never comes out.

6. 6

   Sentier des Ocres — Val des Fées

   Spires and chimneys of ochre so strange people once thought fairies had shaped them — the birthplace of the pigment that went on to colour painters' studios worldwide.

7. 7

   Conservatoire des ocres et de la couleur (Usine Mathieu) ★

   The old works where the ochre was washed and dried — settling basins, drying yards: the whole secret of Roussillon in a single courtyard, a village that found gold in its own earth.