The Most Beautiful Places in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
23 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur are Verdon Gorge, Sénanque Abbey and Calanques National Park. The list covers 23 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is where the Alps fall to the Mediterranean in a few dozen kilometres, through white limestone ranges, deep gorges and perched villages. Rome made Provence its first province beyond the Alps, which is why its towns keep theatres and arches; in the fourteenth century the popes ruled from Avignon, and much later painters came for the dry, bright light.
In Orange the Roman theatre still has its towering stage wall, and the Triumphal Arch nearby dates from the age of Augustus. The amphitheatre of Arles is another Roman survivor, while the Palais des Papes in Avignon is one of the largest Gothic palaces in Europe. Les Baux-de-Provence sits on a rocky spur of the Alpilles, and Èze clings to a peak high above the sea near Nice.
The Verdon has cut a gorge some 700 metres deep before it opens into the reservoir of Sainte-Croix, and at Fontaine de Vaucluse a river emerges from the foot of a cliff as France's largest spring. Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the limestone ridge above Aix, became the subject Paul Cézanne returned to again and again. On the coast, the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild spreads its gardens across Cap Ferrat, and in Marseille the Palais Longchamp celebrates with fountains the arrival of water from the Durance.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Verdon Gorge | Canyon | |
| 2 | Sénanque Abbey | Abbey | |
| 3 | Calanques National Park | Protected area | |
| 4 | Gordes | Most beautiful village | |
| 5 | Èze | Most beautiful village | |
| 6 | Ocres de Roussillon | Quarry | |
| 7 | Palais des Papes | Palace | ✓ |
| 8 | Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild | Historic garden | |
| 9 | Roman Theatre of Orange | Roman theatre | ✓ |
| 10 | Les Baux-de-Provence | Most beautiful village | |
| 11 | Pont Saint-Bénézet | Bridge | ✓ |
| 12 | Arles Amphitheatre | Amphitheatre | ✓ |
| 13 | Triumphal Arch of Orange | Triumphal arch | ✓ |
| 14 | Lake of Sainte-Croix | Reservoir | |
| 15 | Palais Longchamp | Water tower | |
| 16 | Montagne Sainte-Victoire | Mountain | |
| 17 | Fontaine de Vaucluse | Karst spring | |
| 18 | Church of St. Trophime, Arles | Church building | |
| 19 | Moustiers-Sainte-Marie | Most beautiful village | |
| 20 | La Grave | Most beautiful village | |
| 21 | Cosquer Cave | Cave | |
| 22 | Falaises Soubeyranes | Cliff | |
| 23 | Les Pénitents des Mées | Cliff |
01 Verdon Gorge
Gorges du Verdon
France43.738° N 6.364° E
Image by ToNic-Pics from Pixabay Few colours in European landscape are as startling as the Verdon's. The river runs a milky turquoise-green through the bottom of a limestone canyon up to 700 m deep and about 25 km long, and the name itself is said to come from that colour; the tint comes from fine rock flour and minerals suspended in the water.
Did you know? Five dams were built on the Verdon between 1929 and 1975, turning stretches of the valley into reservoirs.
02 Sénanque Abbey
Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque
France43.928° N 5.187° E
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay Sénanque Abbey sits at the bottom of a narrow, wooded valley near Gordes, in the hills of Provence, and in early summer it becomes one of the most photographed images in France: a grey stone Romanesque church and cloister rising behind rows of purple lavender.
Did you know? The warming room, the only heated space in the monastery, also served as the scriptorium where monks copied manuscripts.
03 Calanques National Park
Parc national des Calanques
France · 11.1 km from Marseille43.209° N 5.449° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Calanques are a coast of white limestone cut into narrow inlets, running east from the southern edge of Marseille past Cassis toward La Ciotat.
Did you know? In the Trémies cave, archaeologists found the oldest human traces in the massif: a hearth and stone tools probably more than 300,000 years old.
04 Gordes
France43.911° N 5.200° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 4.0 Gordes is built like an amphitheatre turned inside out.
Did you know? Beneath the Palais Saint-Firmin lie rock-cut cellars with cisterns, underground stairways and old olive-oil mills, listed as a historic monument in 1998.
05 Èze
France · 3.9 km from Monaco43.728° N 7.361° E
Image by bogitw from Pixabay Èze clings to a rock pinnacle above the Riviera like a bird's nest, about 427 m above the sea it looks down on. The medieval village is a knot of stone houses, vaulted passages and stepped lanes too narrow for anything but feet, wound tightly around a summit where a castle once stood.
Did you know? The village motto is Isis Moriendo Renascor, 'In dying I am reborn', and its emblem is a phoenix perched on a bone.
06 Ocres de Roussillon
Le sentier des ocres
France43.900° N 5.298° E
Image by Hans from Pixabay Just outside the hilltop village of Roussillon in Provence, the ground turns every shade from pale yellow through orange to deep red.
Did you know? Beyond paint, Vaucluse ochre became an important ingredient in the early rubber industry.
07 Palais des Papes
France · 39.1 km from Nîmes43.951° N 4.808° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Lens_and_Light from Pixabay For most of the fourteenth century the centre of Western Christendom was not Rome but a rock above the Rhône.
Did you know? Papal bureaucracy grew fast here: by 1316 the curia counted around 500 people, and more than a thousand lay officials worked in the palace.
08 Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild
France · 5.7 km from Nice43.697° N 7.328° E
Berthold Werner · CC BY-SA 3.0 On the narrow neck of land that joins Cap Ferrat to the Riviera coast, a rose-pink villa stands on the crest of the promontory with the sea on both sides, ringed by nine themed gardens.
Did you know? One salon is laid with a Savonnerie carpet, the 87th of 104 that Louis XIV ordered for the Grande Galerie of the Louvre.
09 Roman Theatre of Orange
Théâtre antique d'Orange
France44.136° N 4.809° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by fietzfotos from Pixabay The Roman Theatre of Orange is one of the best-preserved Roman theatres anywhere, and its great stage wall still stands to its full original height. It was built early in the 1st century AD under Augustus for the Roman colony of Arausio, founded by veterans of the Second Legion.
Did you know? In the Middle Ages the Princes of Orange turned the stage building into a fortified outpost of their castle on the hill above.
10 Les Baux-de-Provence
France · 37.1 km from Nîmes43.744° N 4.795° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by gillag from Pixabay Les Baux-de-Provence occupies a bare limestone spur in the Alpilles hills, and the village and the ruined castle above it seem to grow out of the rock itself. From the edge of the plateau the view runs south across the plains, where olive groves fill the valley.
Did you know? The quarry projections began in 1976 under the name Cathédrale d'Images, long before the site became Carrières de Lumières.
11 Pont Saint-Bénézet
Pont d'Avignon
France · 39 km from Nîmes43.954° N 4.805° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Rolf Kranz · CC BY-SA 4.0 The bridge in the nursery song ends in mid-river. Four stone arches leave the Avignon bank of the Rhône and simply stop, with a small chapel perched on one of the piers and the far shore out of reach. What remains is a fragment of a crossing that once ran for about 900 metres to Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.
Did you know? Wood found under the surviving piers was radiocarbon-dated to AD 290–530, feeding a long debate over whether a Roman bridge stood here first.
12 Arles Amphitheatre
Arènes d'Arles
France · 28.3 km from Nîmes43.678° N 4.631° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PierreSelim · CC BY 3.0 In the middle of Arles, the old Roman amphitheatre still dominates the city, its two tiers of arches curving around an oval arena. Built around AD 90, shortly after the Colosseum in Rome, it is about 136 metres long and 109 metres wide and held some twenty thousand spectators for gladiatorial combats and animal hunts.
Did you know? When King Francis I visited Arles in 1516 he was dismayed to find so grand a building in such a wretched state.
13 Triumphal Arch of Orange
Arc antique d'Orange
France44.142° N 4.805° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Xavier D'ABRIGEON · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Triumphal Arch of Orange is one of the best-preserved Roman arches anywhere, and the oldest surviving example of the three-bay design later used for the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Arch of Constantine in Rome itself.
Did you know? The Second Legion is identified in the battle reliefs by its emblem, a capricorn, carved on an officer's shield on the north face.
14 Lake of Sainte-Croix
Lac de Sainte-Croix
France43.764° N 6.184° E
Image by ToNic-Pics from Pixabay The Lake of Sainte-Croix is what happens when the Verdon, having carved one of Europe's deepest river canyons, spills out into open country.
Did you know? First water flowed into the reservoir in August 1973, and the final filling was declared on 15 November of the same year.
15 Palais Longchamp
France · 2.2 km from Marseille43.304° N 5.394° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Palais Longchamp is Marseille's monument to drinking water. In the 1830s the city was short of water and suffered two deadly cholera epidemics, and it answered by building the Canal de Marseille, some 85 kilometres long, to bring water from the Durance.
Did you know? The names of the rivers feeding the Durance are engraved on the triumphal arch, so the monument doubles as a map of where Marseille's water comes from.
16 Montagne Sainte-Victoire
France · 15.9 km from Aix-en-Provence43.539° N 5.645° E
Image by lecreusois from Pixabay Few mountains have been looked at as hard as this one. Montagne Sainte-Victoire is a limestone ridge some 18 km long rising east of Aix-en-Provence, and its south face drops in a pale wall of cliffs between 500 and 700 metres high that, in the Provençal sun, reads from the plain like a great white rampart.
Did you know? A disused quarry on the mountain produced pink marbre d'Aix, used for the bases of the lion sculptures on Aix's Fontaine de la Rotonde.
17 Fontaine de Vaucluse
Exsurgence de Fontaine-de-Vaucluse
France43.918° N 5.133° E
Image by Hans from Pixabay At the head of a closed valley in the Vaucluse hills, a sheer limestone wall about 230 metres high rises above a round, dark pool. That pool is the mouth of the largest spring in France and the birthplace of the river Sorgue.
Did you know? Cousteau came back in 1955 and reached 74 metres, the practical limit of diving on compressed air.
18 Church of St. Trophime, Arles
Ancienne cathédrale Saint-Trophime à Arles
France · 28.2 km from Nîmes43.677° N 4.628° E
Image by djedj from Pixabay The west portal of St. Trophime in Arles is one of the masterpieces of Romanesque sculpture.
Did you know? One capital bears the arms of Arles beside the spread eagle of the Holy Roman Emperor, who ruled the city when it was carved.
19 Moustiers-Sainte-Marie
France43.847° N 6.221° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by lecreusois from Pixabay Moustiers-Sainte-Marie clings to terraces at the foot of two limestone cliffs, where a stream drops through a cleft in the rock straight through the middle of the village.
Did you know? A stone stairway of 262 steps climbs to the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Beauvoir, though the path once counted 365.
20 La Grave
France45.046° N 6.306° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by Sinason from Pixabay Few villages in the Alps stand face to face with a great mountain the way La Grave does with La Meije.
Did you know? La Grave is a member of the Most Beautiful Villages of France association.
21 Cosquer Cave
Grotte Cosquer
France · 11.7 km from Marseille43.203° N 5.449° E
Kleber Rossillon & Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur / Sources 3D MC · CC BY-SA 4.0 Cosquer Cave is the only known decorated Ice Age cave whose entrance now lies beneath the sea. The way in opens 37 metres down at the foot of the cliffs of Cap Morgiou, in the limestone inlets east of Marseille, and a passage about 175 metres long climbs from there to chambers that still hold air.
Did you know? Its paintings include great auks, a flightless seabird driven to extinction in the 19th century.
22 Falaises Soubeyranes
France · 19.6 km from Marseille43.184° N 5.563° E
Mmullie (WMF) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Between the fishing port of Cassis and the old shipbuilding town of La Ciotat, the Provençal coast rears up into a wall of rock that drops sheer into the Mediterranean.
Did you know? Cap Canaille, at the northern end of the cliffs, rises to 363 metres above the sea.
23 Les Pénitents des Mées
Les Pénitents
France44.027° N 5.986° E
Zairon · CC BY 4.0 Above the small Provençal village of Les Mées, a whole procession of stone rises from the hillside: dozens of tall, pointed pillars, crowded shoulder to shoulder along a ridge some two and a half kilometres long, the highest standing more than 100 metres above their base.
Did you know? Their name comes from their resemblance to a procession of hooded penitents.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur?
- On our list, Verdon Gorge ranks first, followed by Sénanque Abbey and Calanques National Park.
- Why did the popes live in Avignon?
- From 1309 to 1377 the papacy resided in Avignon rather than Rome, under seven successive popes. The Palais des Papes was built for them, mainly under Benedict XII and Clement VI.
- How deep is the Verdon Gorge?
- The Verdon Gorge reaches depths of around 700 metres, which makes it one of the deepest canyons in Europe. It runs for about 25 kilometres before the river flows into the Lake of Sainte-Croix.
- Why did Cézanne paint Mont Sainte-Victoire so often?
- Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence and could see the mountain from the countryside around his studio. He painted and drew it dozens of times, using it to work out his ideas about form and colour.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur?
- In our collection, the places in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur are most often villages (5), cliffs (2), mountains (1) and canyons and gorges (1).
- How many places are on this list in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur?
- The list covers 23 places.