The lavender that fills the photographs blooms in a short window around midsummer, earlier on the low plains and later on the high plateau around Valensole, and then the harvest cuts it. Arrive a fortnight early and the rows are green; arrive a fortnight late and they are stubble. Plan a whole trip around that window and you have booked the most crowded, most expensive weeks of the year for a crop that may already be baled. For the rest of the year the region goes on being ochre villages, plane-tree squares, vineyards and Roman stone under a hard blue sky, with UNESCO listing Avignon's papal palace, the Roman monuments of Arles and the Pont du Gard.
The border is the part that has changed while nobody was looking. Travellers from outside the European Union are now registered electronically on first arrival, with a photograph and fingerprints taken instead of a passport stamp, which can make the first entry of a trip slower than the old queue suggested. A separate online travel authorisation for visa-exempt visitors has been announced and delayed more than once, so confirm whether it applies by the time you fly. After that it is easy: Marseille has the main airport, fast trains from Paris reach Avignon and Aix in an afternoon. It is worth stopping to compare flights and hotels for Provence and choosing your corner first, because the Luberon, the Rhone towns and the coast are different holidays wearing one name.
The highlights spread out like a market stall. Avignon keeps the vast Gothic palace of the popes behind its walls, Arles pairs a working Roman arena with the light Van Gogh painted, and the Pont du Gard strides its river in three tiers of honey-coloured stone. In the Luberon, Gordes stacks itself against the hillside, Roussillon glows on its ochre cliffs, and the abbey of Senanque sits in its valley below. What the photographs never mention is that those purple rows are a working crop, and growers ask visitors plainly to stay out of them. Senanque is a living Cistercian monastery rather than a backdrop: visits run at set hours as booked tours, silence is asked for, and the abbey publishes its own rules on what you may photograph, which are worth reading before you point anything at it.
Where you base yourself shapes the holiday. In Avignon, mid-range hotels sit inside the walls near the palace of the popes. In Aix-en-Provence, elegant townhouse hotels gather around the Cours Mirabeau. Out in the Luberon, converted farmhouse guesthouses hide in the lanes around Gordes. In Arles, small family-run hotels cluster within sight of the Roman arena. Wherever you land, expect a local visitor tax on the bill: it is charged per adult per night rather than per room, under-eighteens are exempt, the rate is set by each commune and varies with the category of the property, a departmental surcharge is usually added, and it is normally settled at the property rather than shown in the price you compared online.
This is car country, gently, and a small hire car beats a coach seat or a week of taxi fares. Distances are short but the lanes are slow, so park outside the village walls and walk in, and let one village a morning be enough. Start early for a concrete reason rather than a vague one: the car park at Senanque is small and fills by mid-morning in the peak weeks, and the narrow approach road jams with coaches and photographers stopping for one more shot. One thing to settle at the rental desk: several French cities, Marseille among them, operate low emission zones that require an air quality sticker on the windscreen, the rules survived a political attempt to scrap them, and driving in without one risks a fine, so ask whether your car carries one. Without a car, the Avignon, Arles and Aix triangle still works by train and bus. You can check car hire options for Provence and size the car to the lanes, not the luggage.
Season is the whole argument here. The summer weeks bring the purple and the heat together, and a midsummer afternoon in an unshaded field is punishing, so go early or late in the day and carry more water than you expect to drink. Spring brings blossom and poppies, autumn turns the vineyards rust and gold, winter smells of truffles in the market halls, and the mistral scrubs the sky clean in any month. Personally, I would plan around a market morning rather than a photograph, because the markets rotate town by town and never sell out, the light is better before the coaches arrive, and the Provence that survives the harvest is the one worth coming back for.
Q: When does the lavender bloom in Provence?
A: In a short window around midsummer, earlier on the low plains and later on the high plateau, and the harvest cuts the fields soon afterwards. Arrive too early and the rows are green, too late and they are stubble.
Q: Do visitors have to register at the border on arrival in France?
A: Travellers from outside the European Union now have a photograph and fingerprints recorded electronically instead of a passport stamp, which can slow the first entry of a trip. A separate online authorisation for visa-exempt visitors has been repeatedly delayed, so check whether it applies before you fly.
Q: Can you walk into the lavender fields?
A: No. They are a working crop and growers ask visitors to stay out of the rows. Around Senanque the abbey sets its own rules for visits and photography, so read them rather than assuming.
Q: Do you need a car in Provence?
A: For the hill villages and the lavender roads it is by far the easiest way, with the low emission zone sticker the one thing to check at the rental desk. The triangle of Avignon, Arles and Aix works well by train and bus.
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