Palais des Papes and around
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Palais des Papes

Rising high above the east side of place du Palais is the Palais des Papes (daily: April–June & Oct–Nov 9am–7pm; July–Sept 9am–8pm; Nov to March 9.30am–5.45pm; last ticket 1hr before closing; €9.50, or €11 for palace and the Pont; ticket includes either an audio-guide or a guided tour at 11.30am or 4.45pm in English). With its massive stone vaults, battlements and sluices for pouring hot oil on attackers, the palace was built primarily as a fortress, though the two pointed towers which hover above its gate are incongruously graceful. Close up it is simply too monstrous to take in all at once; for a better view, follow rue Peyrolerie around to the south end and look up. Inside the palace, so little remains of the original decoration and furnishings that you can be deceived into thinking that all the popes and their retinues were as pious and austere as the last official occupant, Benedict XIII. The denuded interior leaves hardly a whiff of the corruption and decadence of fat, feuding cardinals and their mistresses, the thronging purveyors of jewels, velvet and furs, musicians, chefs and painters competing for patronage, the riotous banquets and corridor schemings.

The visit begins in the Pope's Tower, otherwise known as the Tower of Angels. You enter the Treasury where the serious business of the church's deeds and finances went on. Four large holes found in the floor (covered over) of the smaller downstairs room served as safes. The same cunning storage device was used for the Chamberlain who lived upstairs in the Chambre du Camérier (just off the Jesus Hall), where the safes have been revealed. As he was the Pope's right-hand man, the quarters would have been lavishly decorated, but successive occupants have left their mark, most recently military whitewash, and what is now visible is a confusion of layers. The other door in this room leads into the Papal Vestiary, where the Pope would dress before sessions in the consistory. He also had a small library here and could look out onto the gardens below.

A door on the north side of the Jesus Hall leads to the Consistoire of the Vieux Palais, where sovereigns and ambassadors were received and the cardinals' council held. The only decoration that remains are fragments of frescoes moved from the cathedral, and a nineteenth-century line-up of the popes, in which all nine look remarkably similar thanks to the artist using the same model for each portrait. Some medieval artistry is in evidence, however, in the Chapelle St-Jean, off the Consistoire, and in the Chapelle St-Martial on the floor above. Both were decorated by a Sienese artist, Matteo Giovanetti, and commissioned by Clement VI, who demanded the maximum amount of blue – the most expensive pigment, derived from lapis lazuli. The kitchen on this floor also gives a hint of the scale of papal gluttony with its square walls becoming an octagonal chimneypiece for a vast central cooking fire. In the Palais Neuf, Clement VI's bedroom and study are further evidence of this pope's secular concerns, with wonderful food-oriented murals and painted ceilings. But austerity resumes in the cathedral-like proportions of the Grande Chapelle, or Chapelle Clementine, and in the Grande Audience, its twin in terms of volume on the floor below.

When you've completed the circuit, which includes a heady walk along the roof terraces, you can watch a glossy but informative film on the history of the palace (English headphones available). There are also concerts: programmes are available from the ticket office.

Next to the Palais des Papes, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-des-Doms might once have been a luminous Romanesque structure, but the interior has had a bad attack of Baroque. In addition, nineteenth-century maniacs mounted an enormous gilded Virgin on the belfry, which would look silly enough anywhere, but when dwarfed by the fifty-metre towers of the popes' palace is absurd. There's greater reward behind, in the Rocher des Doms park. As well as ducks and swans and views over the river to Villeneuve and beyond, it has a sundial in which your own shadow tells the time.

The Petit Palais (daily except Tues: July & Aug 10am–1pm & 2–6pm; Sept–June 9.30am–1pm & 2–5.30pm; €6), not far from the park's main entrance, contains a daunting collection of first-rate thirteenth- to fifteenth-century painting and sculpture, most of it by masters from northern Italian cities. As you progress through the collection, you can watch as the masters wrestle with and finally conquer the representation of perspective – a revolution from medieval art, where the size of figures depended on their importance rather than position. Highlight of the collection, in room XVI, Botticelli's sublime Virgin and Child depicts a tender Mary, playfully coddling a smiling infant.

Behind the Petit Palais, and well signposted, is the half-span of Pont St-Bénézet, or the Pont d'Avignon of the famous song (same hours as Palais des Papes; €3.50, €11 combined ticket with Palais des Papes). One theory has it that the lyrics say "Sous le pont" (under the bridge) rather than "Sur le pont" (on the bridge), and refer to the thief and trickster clientele of a tavern on the Île de la Barthelasse (which the bridge once crossed on its way to Villeneuve) dancing with glee at the arrival of more potential victims. Keeping the bridge in repair from the ravages of the Rhône was finally abandoned in 1660, three and a half centuries after it was built, and only four of the original 22 arches remain. Despite its limited transportational use, the bridge remained a focus of river boatmen, who constructed a chapel to their patroness on the first of the bridge's bulwarks.