Lourmarin

Lourmarin is the only village in the Luberon that sits in the valley rather than on a hilltop, and it has a different quality as a result — more open, more inhabited, less theatrical. It has a real daily market, good cafes, a 16th-century castle worth visiting, and a population that appears to actually live there rather than merely inhabit it for the summer.

The Château de Lourmarin is open to visitors and contains a collection of art and furniture accumulated over centuries; the courtyard and loggia are more interesting than the collections. The market on Friday mornings is excellent — local producers from across the Luberon bring vegetables, cheese, honey, and wine.

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A story
Albert Camus is buried in the cemetery at Lourmarin — he bought a house here with his Nobel Prize money in 1958 and died in a car accident near Paris barely two years later. His grave is simple: a concrete slab with a rosemary bush growing over it. The village itself seems to embody something of his spirit: austere, beautiful, unpretentious, and more alive than the picture-postcard villages further north.

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