Provence travel guide, in your ear
Lavender fields, ochre villages, Roman aqueducts, and the sun-drenched heart of southern France, scattered across the Luberon and Alpilles hills.
- 12 narrated stops
- ~36 minutes of stories
- 6 languages
- Offline ready
What is the Gingerguide Provence tour?
It is a self-guided audio walking tour of Provence, France, inside the Gingerguide travel guide app. The tour maps 12 sights and tells the story of each one in a two to three minute narration with a lifelike AI voice. When the story is not enough, ask the built-in AI guide about the place and keep the conversation going. Everything is available in six languages and works fully offline after a one-time download.
About Provence
Provence is the sun-drenched south of France, a land where the light itself is the attraction. Painters crossed the country to catch it: that clear, golden glow falling on purple lavender, silver olive groves, and pale stone villages perched on their hills. It is a place of slow days and strong scents, of markets and rosé and long lunches under the plane trees.
Its very name comes from Rome. This was the first Roman province beyond the Alps, and the Romans left some of their finest monuments here: a colossal aqueduct striding across a river gorge, a great arena and theatre still standing after two thousand years. Later, for most of the fourteenth century, the popes themselves ruled from Avignon, raising the largest Gothic palace in Europe on the banks of the Rhône.
This is painters' country above all. Van Gogh spent two blazing years near Arles, pouring out sunflowers, wheat fields, and starry nights, and Cézanne painted his beloved mountain again and again from Aix. Between the easels lies the everyday Provence: stalls piled with olives and melons and herbs, the crack of a game of pétanque, the cold north wind called the mistral, and a hundred honey-colored villages.
Three things you must not miss. In high summer, the lavender plateaus around Valensole roll away in stripes of deep purple, humming with bees, from late June into July. The Roman Pont du Gard and the old streets of Arles carry the ancient world into the present. And the hill villages of the Luberon, like Gordes on its cliff and ochre-red Roussillon, are among the loveliest in France.
Spend an evening in a village square as the heat finally fades. The cicadas fall quiet, the stone glows amber, and someone pours a glass of cold rosé while the smell of lavender and warm earth drifts down the lanes. Provence does not rush, and it will gently teach you not to either. Few places on earth are so easy simply to be.
One day in Provence
A simple way to walk the highlights, following the route order in the app. Swap anything; Provence rewards detours.
Midday
Afternoon and evening
What to see in Provence: all 12 stops
Every place below has its own narrated story in the app, and its own answers when you want more. Walk them in any order; the map shows what is around you.
-
Les Baux-de-Provence
A dramatic cliffside village perched on a rocky outcrop above the Alpilles, crowned by ruined medieval fortifications and home to the spectacular Carrières de Lumières immersive art show.
-
Avignon
The "City of Popes," where the papacy resided for 68 years in the 14th century, a walled medieval city on the Rhône with the world's largest Gothic palace and a world-famous bridge.
-
Palais des Papes
The world's largest Gothic palace, built between 1335 and 1352 as the seat of the Avignon Papacy, covering 15,000 square metres across two vast interconnected buildings.
-
Arles
A Roman city where Van Gogh painted over 200 masterpieces, still dominated by a 1st-century amphitheatre seating 21,000 that is used for bullfights today, and by the ancient Roman necropolis of Les Alyscamps.
-
Gordes
Regularly voted "one of the most beautiful villages in France," Gordes perches on a dramatic limestone cliff in the Luberon with its medieval château, dry-stone Village des Bories, and lavender festival.
-
Roussillon
A village of 17 shades of ochre, perched above the extraordinary Colorado Provençal, the largest ochre quarry in the world, where the cliffs and houses glow in every shade from pale yellow to deep blood-red.
-
Abbaye de Sénanque
A 12th-century Cistercian abbey still inhabited by monks, surrounded by lavender fields in a remote Luberon valley, the most photographed combination of architecture and landscape in Provence.
-
Mont Ventoux
The "Giant of Provence", a 1,912-metre isolated mountain whose bare white limestone summit is visible for 100 kilometres, famous as the most challenging climb in the Tour de France and offering views from the Alps to the Mediterranean.
-
Luberon (Bonnieux & Ménerbes)
The Luberon massif and its hilltop villages, immortalised by Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence", offer lavender fields, cedar forests, medieval villages, and the wild landscapes of the Luberon Regional Natural Park.
-
Fontaine-de-Vaucluse
France's most powerful natural spring, where the Sorgue river emerges from a mysterious underground network at the base of a towering cliff, a place of extraordinary natural drama and the retreat of the Renaissance poet Petrarch.
-
Pont du Gard
A UNESCO World Heritage Roman aqueduct bridge built around 19 BC, standing 49 metres high and carrying water 50 kilometres from Uzès to Nîmes for over 400 years, the best-preserved Roman structure in France.
-
Lavender Fields of Valensole
The Plateau de Valensole is Provence's most spectacular lavender landscape, vast fields of purple lavender stretching to the horizon from June to July, interspersed with almond trees and beehives, producing some of France's finest lavender essential oil and honey.
Three things most visitors miss
Les Baux-de-Provence
Bauxite, the ore from which all the world's aluminium is extracted, is named after Les Baux-de-Provence, where it was first scientifically described in 1821 by geologist Pierre Berthier.
Avignon
The Avignon Papacy (1309-1377) was so controversial that the poet Petrarch, who lived nearby in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, called Avignon "the Babylon of the West" and denounced the corruption of the papal court with furious elegance.
Palais des Papes
The Palais des Papes sprawls across some 15,000 square metres of halls, floors, and chapels, the largest Gothic palace ever built, combining fortress, palace, and church in one colossal structure.
Provence tour: questions and answers
Do I need a tour guide in Provence?
Not a human one. Gingerguide covers Provence with 12 narrated sights, so you get the stories a guide would tell, at your own pace and on your own route. And if a story leaves you with a question, you can ask the built-in AI guide and discuss the place right there, the way you would with a guide.
How many stops does the Provence audio tour have?
The Provence guide covers 12 sights. Each one has a researched story of roughly three minutes, about 36 minutes of listening in total. You choose the order and the pace; the tour is self-guided.
Does the Provence tour work offline?
Yes. You can download Provence in the app, audio, photos, and offline map tiles included. After the download, the full tour works without an internet connection.
Which languages does the Provence guide support?
Every Provence narration is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, and Chinese. You can switch the language in the app at any time.
Is the Provence audio guide free?
The Gingerguide app is free to download, and Provence includes a free preview: you can see all 12 sights on the map at no cost. A premium subscription unlocks the full stories, audio narration, and the offline download.
Hear Provence tell its own story.
Preview all 12 Provence stops free in the Gingerguide app.