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Provence-Fontaine de Vaucluse

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Isle-sur-Sorgue


Fontaine de Vaucluse


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 abbey

Camargue

From L’Isle sur la Sorgue to FONTAINE DE VAUCLUSE is a distance of 10 km. We can go and see where the water from the pure Sorgue comes from that runs to Avignon to disappear in the Rhone. Alas!! Only the river Sorgue stayed pure in this FONTAINE DE VAUCLUSE, a total prey for the tourist industry! If you can avoid going there on a Sunday, avoid it !
What the contemporary commerce succeeded to exploit the best is the famous “fontaine”, one of the most mysterious grottos in the country where the immense power of the friendly Sorgue is revived regularly. The second victim of the commercial spirit is the 14th century poet Petrarca, who lived in this village from 1337 to 1353 and wrote his famous“sonnets to Laura”.

Petrarca (miniature)

Laura

While the “fountain” is reachable, even tangible and thus touristically understandable, I can not believe that the slightest percentage of the many ten thousand yearly tourists who march between the souvenir tents and French fries booths on the shores of the Sorgue, have the faintest idea of what Petrarca wrote or even who Petrarca is. It is already since the 17th century that the village is overflowed by  “tourists” who wanted to be on the spot where the poet was so unhappy (poetically).
First of all the origin of the fountain is already a mystery. The river surges trough a siphon that was already the aim of many explorations since  1878.
Fed by rain water that drains through the Vaucluse plateau, it emerges within a cave, and in winter and spring, the flow can rise to 160 cubic metres a second. Needless to say, this natural spectacle is very impressive and is visited from all over the world. Emerald green waters gush forth from the underground river and such famous investigators like Jacques Cousteau have explored it. As you guessed it already I have an aversion against this village where all the snack bars and ice cream joints are named Petrarca and Laura. But sometimes, on a moonlighted evening in October it can be beautiful. A warm light comes out of the silent houses and you hear the Sorgue mumble.
In his “Little Tour in France” Henry James writes that he went kecking to Fontaine de Vaucluse but had to admit that, even if it had cockneyfied, it would be dumb to miss it. Also James didn’t escape the fascination of this special place.
A few museums:
---- musee Petrarque, evokes guess who? 
----musee de la Resistance. Take some time to visit this superb museum, opened in 1990. Depicting the life in Provence during the German occupation. The collections of more than 10.000 pieces and documents evoke, at the ground floor, the life in the region during the German occupation. It makes us think that all this could happen again. Extremism, hate and racism didn't disappear and the hideous monster could reappear anytime....
---musee du Santon et des Traditions de Provence : the name says it all.

Bibliography

A guide to Provence, by Michael Jacobs (Viking, London 1988), The Ventoux summit., the secret, by Petrarca (Ambo, Baarn 1990), Mémoires d’un touriste, by Stendhal (Pleiade, Paris 1992), "Guide de la Provence mysterieuse" and "Provence Antique"by Jean-Paul Clebert (Ed.Sand, 1986 “Aspects of Provence, by Pope-Henessy James (Penguin Travel 1988), “Le Vaucluse, pas une sinecure””by Roger de la Borge (ed. Climats, Avignon, 1999)-Guides du Routard, (1999)