The Colours of the Luberon

Fall is a colourful time of the year in most parts of the Northern hemisphere but there is something special about the colours of the Luberon in Provence. Artists and photographers from around the world extol the luminescence that seemingly make the natural hues of Provence at once more vibrant and more subtle...

The variegated greens of the olives, oaks, cypress and plane trees silhouetted against the perfectly clear azure sky provide the backdrop to a world of natural colour and these photos need no explanation...

But there is one special place in the Luberon where all the colours meet in a glorious symphony of luminescence – a place of such intense natural beauty that it is difficult to accept that this is not a painting by an exuberant artist ..

These are the ochre rich cliffs upon which the village of Roussillion was built, both physically and financially. Until the advent of chemical dyes a hundred years ago the natural ochre from Roussillion was prized worldwide and was used extensively to paint the Creole Quarter in New Orleans. Today it is only used to paint the houses in Roussillion – but what a sight ,

This corner of southern France was also renowned for its silk and for its olives...

Synthetic fibres devastated the silk industry after WWII and an exceptionally cold winter in 1956 killed all of the olive trees. The Luberon region was already suffering from the aftermath of two World Wars. Many of the young men had left the farms to fight and never returned, leaving only the old and destitute. By the 1970s it wasn't possible to give away derelict houses and land. But then a miracle occurred in the form of mass international travel. Artists, photographers and writers discovered the beauty of this land and as the images and word spread so did its cache. There is nothing cheap here anymore, apart from the cheese and the wine, but with landscapes likes this around every bend who would expect cheap?...