The Most Beautiful Villages in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful villages in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur are Les Baux-de-Provence, Èze and Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. The list covers 5 villages. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur packs an extraordinary range of village settings into one region: limestone spurs above the olive groves of the Alpilles and the Luberon, cliff ledges over the Mediterranean on the Riviera, and high Alpine hamlets beneath glaciers. Many of its villages were built on hilltops in the Middle Ages for safety, and their stone houses grew out of the rock itself, which is why they look so much of a piece with the landscape around them.
Les Baux-de-Provence stands on a rocky spur of the Alpilles, crowned by the ruins of its castle; the mineral bauxite takes its name from the village. Gordes climbs a hillside in the Luberon in tiers of pale stone houses, with dry-stone huts called bories scattered in the countryside around it. Moustiers-Sainte-Marie sits in a cleft at the foot of the cliffs near the Verdon Gorge, with a gilded star hanging on a chain stretched between the two rock walls above it, and has been known for its faience since the seventeenth century.
On the coast, Èze perches on a rocky peak high above the sea between Nice and Monaco, its lanes winding up to an exotic garden on the summit. At the other end of the region, La Grave is a mountain village in the Hautes-Alpes facing the glaciers of La Meije, one of the great peaks of the French Alps.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Les Baux-de-Provence | Most beautiful village | |
| 2 | Èze | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Moustiers-Sainte-Marie | Most beautiful village | |
| 4 | Gordes | Most beautiful village | |
| 5 | La Grave | Most beautiful village |
01 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 In 1642 the town was granted as a marquisate to Hercule de Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, and the title of Marquis of Les Baux is still borne by the heir to the Monegasque throne. The village below the ruins keeps the Church of Saint Vincent, where a pastoral Christmas Eve ceremony, in which shepherds bring a newborn lamb in a cart drawn by a ram, has been revived since 1902. In the nearby Val d'Enfer, vast abandoned limestone quarries host Carrières de Lumières, where images are projected across some 4,000 square metres of rock walls.
Did you know? Jean Cocteau shot scenes of his last film, Le Testament d'Orphée, in the quarries of the Val d'Enfer in September 1959.
02 Èze
France · 3.9 km from Monaco43.728° N 7.361° E
Image by bogitw from Pixabay Below the village, a steep path zigzags down through pine and scrub to the hamlet of Èze-sur-Mer. It carries the name of Friedrich Nietzsche, who lived in Nice, and tradition holds that walking it helped him shape the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Climbing it from the shore is a stiff ascent, and the most rewarding way to arrive.
Did you know? Moors held the area for about 80 years until William of Provence drove them out in 973.
03 Moustiers-Sainte-Marie
France43.847° N 6.221° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by lecreusois from Pixabay For centuries Moustiers was a centre of fine pottery, especially faience. Water from the spring-fed waterfall powered the workshops, and from the late 17th century masters such as Clérissy, Olérys and Ferrat made its blue-painted wares famous. The last kiln went cold in 1873, until Marcel Provence revived the craft in the 1920s, and a faience museum opened in the village in 1929. Today the village has fewer than 700 inhabitants and is a member of the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.
Did you know? Tradition places the knight's vow in his captivity after the fall of Damietta in 1249, during the Seventh Crusade.
04 Gordes
France43.911° N 5.200° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 4.0 The land around the village is as remarkable as the village itself. About 1.5 km to the west, the Village des Bories preserves 28 dry-stone buildings — huts, barns and bread ovens made of thin limestone slabs laid without mortar, most of them dating from the land clearance that followed a royal edict of 1766. Close by, in a narrow valley, lies Sénanque Abbey, founded by Cistercian monks in 1148 and still home to a small community; the monks grow lavender in front of the abbey, and the purple rows before its plain stone church make one of the most familiar pictures of Provence.
Did you know? The bell tower of the Saint-Firmin church has an outside staircase that leads nowhere, a trace of a building that once stood against it.
05 La Grave
France45.046° N 6.306° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by Sinason from Pixabay La Meije holds a special place in the history of mountaineering. It was one of the last great summits of the Alps to be climbed: the Grand Pic was reached only on 16 August 1877, by Emmanuel Boileau de Castelnau with the guides Pierre Gaspard and his son. A century later, in the 1970s, cable cars were built from La Grave up onto the glaciers of the Meije at around 3,200 metres. Below them there are no groomed runs, only vast high-mountain slopes and couloirs, and La Grave became a legend among freeride skiers. In the shaded valley, frozen waterfalls draw ice climbers each winter, while in summer the Plateau d'Emparis above the village offers lakes that mirror the whole Meije range.
Did you know? La Grave's church dates back to the 11th century and is the oldest monument in the upper Romanche valley.
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 villages in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur?
- On our list, Les Baux-de-Provence ranks first, followed by Èze and Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.
- Why are so many Provençal villages built on hilltops?
- These perched villages, or villages perchés, grew up in the Middle Ages when hilltops were easier to defend against raids and conflict. Building high also kept the scarce fertile land in the valleys free for farming.
- What is the star of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie?
- It is a gilded star hung on a long chain between the two cliffs above the village. Local legend says a knight of the Blacas family placed it there in thanks for returning home from captivity during the Crusades.
- Is bauxite named after Les Baux-de-Provence?
- Yes. The aluminium ore was identified near the village by the geologist Pierre Berthier in 1821 and named after it.
- How many villages are on this list in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur?
- The list covers 5 villages.