Sur la pont....

Our next stop was Avignon, famous for a couple reasons. The first one (and probably not the one most of you are thinking of right now) is.....the Palais de Papes.



I'm a little shaky on the history here, but at some point the Pope had to leave the Vatican, and came here to the Palais de Papes instead. Or there were two popes, and one of them had to leave ("this Vatican isn't big enough for the both of us")? Ok, so a lot shaky on the history.....just a minute, I'll get good ol' google to help us all (i.e., me) out........

You would think this page would be the most helpful.....but wasn't:
http://www.palais-des-papes.com/anglais/pdphistoire.html

Hmmm.....This is taking longer than I expected. Next stop, MSN search (sorry Matt, should have come here first) which sent me to Wilkipedia

Not a ton better, but here's what I've got. In the 14th C there was dissension towards the Church by the Roman aristocrats (although I'm not sure why) and Pope Clement V moved the pope's residence from Rome to Avignon. This might have been due to something with the French Kings (I'm very helpful here, aren't I?) and is now sometimes seen as a wrong against the "spiritual part" of the post.....Anyways, the period where the Popes were in Avignon is known as the Babylon Captivity.

A little photographic interlude.....



Ok, back to the story. In 1378 the popes residence moved back to Rome, but some people still honoured the bishop in Avignon as the head of the church. For a while there remained popes in Avignon (I think this is where I remembered the 'two popes' idea from). Not the real pope though--The antipopes were in Avignon (really are called the antipopes. They're popes that are elected, and not considered to truly be the head of the church by, well, the church). I'm not sure if the bishop was an antipope? Um....this period of the antipopes was called the Great Schism.

Admittedly, not a great history lesson here. Anyone else can help me out?

Before moving on, one last look at the Palais de Papes--home of the Antipope!


And now the real reason for visiting Avignon......the Avignon bridge (also known as the St. Benezet bridge). You can see by the picture that it is only half a bridge. Apparently it kept getting destroyed when by floodwaters, and finally half of it washed away. I'm a little better on the history of this one because Sara and I listed to a long (!!!) self guided tour while standing on the bridge. Maybe it wasn't that long, but when it's freezing cold out, extremely windy, and you're standing on a bridge in the middle of a river, hearing the date and time that each column was destroyed ("....and then, in 1567 the 6th column was washed away in a flood. In 1568 columns 8 and 9 were destroyed....etc. etc."... [all dates and columns completely made up]) it seemed far to long. C'mon, we're cold......get to the song already!


One of my favourite parts of the story is the most recent though--in 2000 (?) Avignon rebuilt the bridge to become the European city of culture for the year. Why is it still only 1/2 a bridge then.....after the "city of culture" title moved on, the tore the rebuilt section back down. Other favourite parts? Descriptions of how icy the bridge would get in winter, and details of the different people who fell on it.

But the real reason for coming to Avignon.....

Sur le pont d'Avignon.....


L'on y danse,


L'on y danse


Sur le pont d'Avignon.....


L'on y danse tous en rond