Free Walking Tour Gordes: Village, Bories and Sénanque

Your Gordes walking tour, place by place

1. 1

   Gordes Panoramic Viewpoint

   

   Start with the whole village. From the Rocher Bel-Air viewpoint, free and open at any hour, Gordes appears as one object: houses of stone stacked on a rocky spur, inside the Luberon Regional Natural Park. This is the only stop on the route where you see it like this. Every lane you are about to walk sits inside that frame; you just cannot pick them out yet.

   Use the view as a map. The parish church you reach next is part of that stack, the château crowns the village at its heart, and the cobbled lanes run between and behind them. Then the route leaves the village on foot, west to the dry-stone huts and on to a working monastery in its own valley. Hold that order in your head, and the rest of the walk fills it in.

   From here it is 710 m, about 13 minutes, up into the village to the Church of Saint-Firmin.

   Hours

   Open 24/7

   Price

   Free

   Location

   Gordes Panoramic Viewpoint on Google Maps ↗

2. 2

   Church of Saint-Firmin

   

   The first door in the village. Saint-Firmin is the Catholic parish church of Gordes and free to enter, but it is a working parish rather than a monument with visiting hours. You arrive, you try the door, and you take what you find. If it is open, look in; if not, you have lost half a minute, and the village around it is already the attraction.

   Do not build the morning around it. The château stands just 60 m away, a minute's walk, and that is the first visit of the day worth real time.

   Price

   Free

   Website

   gordes-village.com ↗

   Location

   Church of Saint-Firmin on Google Maps ↗

3. 3

   Château de Gordes

   

   Look at the château from two sides and you see two buildings. The north front is a fortress; the south front is a Renaissance residence. That split is the whole history of the place. A fortress has stood above Gordes for almost a thousand years, first mentioned in 1031 under Guillaume d'Agoult, an early member of the powerful feudal family that also fortified the neighbouring villages. His successors strengthened it so much that in 1123 it was the only castle in the area to be called a nobile castrum, a noble fortress.

   In the middle of the 14th century the simple keep was raised, as across Provence and the Comtat Venaissin, to hold off the raids of Raymond de Turenne, Arnault de Servoie and the Grandes Compagnies. Then, between 1525 and 1541, Bertrand Rambaud de Simiane built the grand Renaissance château on the rock at the centre of the village. Remember the Simiane name; it comes back at the end of the walk.

   During the Wars of Religion the château was besieged and never taken. It passed from the Simiane family to the Counts of Soubise and, in the 18th century, to the princes of Bourbon-Condé, who simply kept it in repair. Revolutionaries took it over in 1789 without destroying it. Early 20th-century photos show a café on its ground floor, closed later after a wall was broken through. It became a Monument historique on 4 July 1931, and the round tower was listed separately on 28 October 1949.

   Is it worth the ticket? Yes, if you like views and history: a walkway at roof height looks out over the Comtat Venaissin and the Apt valley. Allow about an hour. From the gate, 150 m and two minutes take you into the cobbled lanes.

   Hours

   Daily 10:00–13:00, 14:00–18:00

   Price

   6 EUR adult, 4 EUR reduced (12-17 years, students, groups 10+)

   Website

   chateaudegordes.com ↗

   Location

   Château de Gordes on Google Maps ↗

4. 4

   Cobbled lanes of Gordes

   

   Now Gordes at walking pace. The calades are the village's medieval cobbled lanes: public space, free, open at any hour. There is no single sight here and no ticket, and that is the point. For once, walk without a destination and let the village be a village, one paving stone at a time.

   This is also the last stop inside Gordes and the real decision point of the day. The two legs that follow carry most of the route's distance: 2,600 m, about 34 minutes, west to the Village des Bories, then the longest stretch on to Sénanque. Decide here, with the village still around you, whether the day has that much walking left in it. The short version is a complete visit; the long one is the one with the monastery in it.

   Hours

   Open 24/7

   Price

   Free

   Location

   Cobbled lanes of Gordes on Google Maps ↗

5. 5

   Village des Bories

   

   About twenty dry-stone huts on a hill in the scrubland the people of Gordes call the garrigue or the montagne, bordered by the Sénancole stream on the west and the Gamache vale on the east. Look closely at the walls: they are built from local limestone slabs ten or fifteen centimetres thick, called lauses or clapes, fitted without any mortar.

   These were never homes in the usual sense. They were farm outbuildings used by season, in an outlying district officially named Les Savournins. The 1809 land register calls the hamlet hameau des Savournins, listing a hut as cabane while intact and in use, and as sol de cabane once abandoned. Locals still called the place Les Cabanes in the late 1970s.

   The hamlet grew out of a royal edict of 1766 that set off a wave of land clearing across 18th-century Provence. The rush to the hills pulled masses of stone out of the ground, and that stone became field walls and huts. Shards found during the restoration of the 1970s match earthenware made around Apt in the 18th and 19th centuries.

   The name is a modern invention. Pierre Viala, who discovered, owned and restored the site, coined it. The word borie itself rests on a mistake: a 19th-century scholar misread an old place name, Les Borrys, as meaning a dry-stone hut. Go in if rural life and building by hand interest you; it is an open-air museum, and the huts reward a slow look. Then comes the longest leg: 3,280 m, about 53 minutes, to Sénanque Abbey.

   Hours

   Jan & mid-Nov to Dec: Daily 10:00–17:00; Feb to late Mar & late Oct to mid-Nov: Daily 09:00–17:30; late Mar to May & Oct: Daily 09:00–18:30; Jun & Sep: Daily 09:00–19:00; Jul–Aug: Daily 09:00–20:00

   Price

   8 EUR adult, 4 EUR reduced (12-17 years, students)

   Website

   levillagedesbories.com ↗

   Location

   Village des Bories on Google Maps ↗

6. 6

   Sénanque Abbey

   

   The walk ends in a narrow, secluded valley at a Cistercian abbey, Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque. Monks from Mazan Abbey in the Ardèche founded it in 1148, under the patronage of Alfant, bishop of Cavaillon, and Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona and Provence. The first community was poor and lived in temporary huts. By 1152 it had grown so fast that it could found Chambons Abbey in the diocese of Viviers.

   Here the Simiane name returns: the lords of Simiane became the monks' patrons and funded the abbey church, consecrated in 1178. Notice how it sits. The church forms a tau cross, with an apse that projects beyond the outer walls, and its liturgical east end points north, because the valley left no room for the usual layout.

   Inside, the austerity is the point. The abbey survives remarkably untouched: church, cloister, dormitory, chapter house and the small calefactory, the one heated room, where the monks could write, so it served as their scriptorium. In the cloister, the capitals of the paired columns are cut down to the plainest leaf forms so as not to distract. Only the refectory is later, added in the 17th century.

   Sénanque peaked in the 13th and 14th centuries with four mills, seven granges and large estates across Provence. In 1509 its first commendatory abbot was named, a sure sign of decline, and only about a dozen monks remained. In the Wars of Religion, Huguenots ransacked the abbey and destroyed the lay brothers' quarters. Guided tours run at set times, with several each afternoon; if Romanesque architecture is your thing, this is the visit to save energy for.

   Local name

   Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque

   Hours

   Mon–Sat 09:45–11:00 & 13:00–17:00 (guided tours 10:00, 10:30, 13:30, 14:30, 15:30, 16:30, 17:00); Sun 13:00–17:00 (guided tours 13:30, 14:30, 15:30, 16:30, 17:00)

   Price

   8 EUR adult, 6 EUR reduced (students 18-25), 4 EUR child (6-17)

   Website

   senanque.fr ↗

   Location

   Sénanque Abbey on Google Maps ↗

Three ways to walk Gordes

The walk splits naturally at the cobbled lanes: everything before them sits inside the village, everything after is a long walk out into the hills. Choose by how much walking the day has in it.

The village only

Stops: 1, 2, 3, 4

For a half day, or for pairing Gordes with another village. 920 m and 16 min of walking from the viewpoint to the lanes; the only ticket is the château.

Village and dry-stone huts

Stops: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

For anyone curious about rural Provence who would rather skip the long final leg. 3.5 km and 50 min of walking; tickets for the château and the Village des Bories. You finish at the huts, so plan your way back.

The full route to the abbey

Stops: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

For a full day on foot. 6.8 km and 1 h 43 min of walking; tickets for the château, the bories and Sénanque Abbey.

How long this Gordes tour takes, with or without Sénanque

The pure walking time is 1 h 43 min, and almost all of it comes after the village: the two legs out to the bories and on to the abbey take 87 minutes between them. Inside Gordes the stops sit a minute or two apart, apart from the 13 minutes from the viewpoint to the church.

With an hour in the château, about 45 minutes among the huts and an hour at the abbey, the full route fills around five and a half hours. One schedule that works on any day: viewpoint at 9:30, church just before 10:00, château from 10:10 until about 11:10, the lanes until roughly 11:40, the bories from about 12:15 until 13:00, and Sénanque shortly before 14:00, in time for an afternoon guided tour.

The village-only version takes a little over two hours; adding the bories brings it to about three and a half.

Before you set off in Gordes

• Start and finish: The Gordes Panoramic Viewpoint is the recommended start, but you can join at any stop. The full route ends at Sénanque Abbey in its valley outside the village, so sort out how you get back before you leave.
• When to go: Any day works. Start in the morning: visiting the château early keeps you clear of its midday break, and you then reach the abbey once it has opened for the afternoon.
• Costs: Walking, map and GPS route cost nothing. The château, the Village des Bories and Sénanque Abbey each charge an entry fee.

Common questions about walking Gordes