Orange has an unusual religious history for Provence. As a sovereign principality under the Protestant House of Orange-Nassau from 1544, it was a Calvinist enclave in Catholic France for nearly 150 years, and Protestants from across the south took refuge here. The Temple Protestant — a simple neo-Romanesque church built in 1864 on Rue Saint-Florent — is a small reminder of that legacy.
The interior is austere in the Reformed tradition: white walls, wooden pews, a central pulpit. The temple is open for services and a few hours on summer afternoons. The Protestant community in Orange today is small but the link with the Netherlands — formalised when William the Silent inherited the principality — remains the reason Dutch national football still plays in orange shirts.