Villa César

Château de GiconChusclan

The ruined 13th-century fortress on the rocky spur directly behind the house — you can walk to it from the garden gate. The marked trail climbs through vines and holm oak, passing the old chapel of Sainte-Madeleine, built in the 13th century by the Carthusians of Valbonne. From the belvedere at the top the view opens 360°: the Rhône directly below, Mont Ventoux to the east, the Alpilles to the south, and the Alps on a clear morning.

It is an old oppidum site, fortified because four provinces met here. Louis IX is said to have stopped at Gicon in 1248 on his way to the crusade at Tunis. In 1973 the Chusclan winegrowers bought the whole thing; they still work the twelve hectares of the old seigneurial vineyard and bottle a Château de Gicon cuvée from it.

Go early or after 18:00. There is no shade on the last stretch and no water anywhere on the walk — fill up before you leave. Good shoes; the path is stony.

Also here: marked mountain-bike trails, a picnic area, and an escape game in the ruins, Les Secrets du Château.

Chusclan village

Small, unhurried, and yours for a week. Chusclan is one of the historic named crus of the Côtes du Rhône Villages appellation and has been known for its rosé since long before rosé was fashionable. The cooperative, Maison Sinnae, sits opposite the campsite and pours both the Chusclan and Laudun wines — a tasting there is genuinely worth your time, and the obvious first stop of the week.

Camp de Césarthe flat hill you see from the terrace

An eighteen-hectare ancient town on the Lacau plateau, 264 m up, dominating the Rhône corridor — one of the most important archaeological sites in southern Roman Gaul. It was lived in for more than a thousand years, from the Iron Age in the 5th century BC through the Roman high empire and on into the Middle Ages.

You walk it like an open book: the earliest ramparts, a postern and tower, the Roman main gate, the foundations of the forum and the basilica, the craft quarter, the necropolises, and two later places of worship — a Romanesque oratory and the chapel of Saint-Jean. The path up runs through pine and oak, and the belvederes look out over the whole Gard rhodanien.

The local legend: at midnight on 24 June, Saint John's Eve, a chasm is said to open on the plateau and the Cabro d'Or — the golden goat, emblem of the sun at the solstice — leaps out of it.

La Roque-sur-Cèze & the Cascades du Sautadet

A car-free village of pale stone on a rock spur, crowned by a 12th-century castle and reached by a medieval bridge — one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France. Below it, the Cèze has cut a limestone shelf nearly 500 m wide into a staircase of falls dropping up to 15 m, riddled with channels, rapids and giant's kettles, some of them more than 10 m deep.

Loop walk of about 3 km, easy, roughly 1½ hours. Leave the car in the car park at the bottom of the village. In July and August, arrive before 10:00 or the site is saturated.

Goudargues

Known as the little Venice of the Gard: a spring-fed canal runs the length of the main street between two rows of enormous plane trees, with cafés set out along the water and a 12th-century abbey church behind. It is a place for a long lunch and very little ambition. The Cèze nearby has easy swimming spots.

Grotte de la Salamandre

Opened to the public only in 2013, and staged like a piece of theatre — a single vast chamber of "crystal giants" lit and scored across twelve tableaux. The guided tour lasts about an hour. Open daily 10:00–19:00 in July and August.

Four other ways in: the panoramic belvedere alone (~€11, wheelchair accessible); the Grand Rappel, a 50 m abseil down the natural shaft to arrive through the ceiling (~€47.50, ages 12+); a two-hour caving trip through the hidden galleries (~€47.50, ages 10+); or a 20-minute flight in an aéroplume airship inside the cave (~€85.50). All bookable online, and worth doing.

Aven d'OrgnacGrand Site de France

Cathedral-scale underground rooms with ceilings up to 55 m, forests of giant palm-tree stalagmites, translucent fistules and ochre drapery, shaped over a hundred million years and discovered in 1935. The one-hour guided tour is compulsory and must be booked; a lift brings you back up so there is no climb.

The ticket also includes the Cité de la Préhistoire next door, a genuinely good modern museum covering 350,000 years of human occupation of the region, with hands-on workshops — fire-making, flint, spear-throwing — during the school holidays.

It is 12 °C inside, all year. Take a jumper, however hot the car park is.

Grotte Chauvet 2Ardèche

The largest replica of a decorated cave in the world, reproducing the paintings of the Chauvet cave — horses, lions, rhinoceroses, drawn 36,000 years ago, discovered in 1994, and now UNESCO-listed. The original will never be open to the public; this is as close as anyone gets, and it is astonishing rather than merely educational.

Entry covers a one-hour guided tour, the Galerie de l'Aurignacien, and the exhibitions, set in a 15-hectare wooded park with a restaurant. Open 08:30–20:30 daily in July and August.

Book online. It is the most visited site in the Ardèche and slots sell out in August. Arrive 30 minutes before your tour. No photography inside.

Keep your ticket: Chauvet 2, the Aven d'Orgnac and the Pont du Gard each give €1 per person off the other two within 7 days.

Canoeing

The classic run is the 24 km descent of the Ardèche gorges from Vallon-Pont-d'Arc to Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche, passing under the natural arch of the Pont d'Arc in the first kilometre — a full day, with rapids gentle enough for confident beginners. Shorter 8–12 km stretches are available on the same river, and the Cèze offers calmer, quieter paddling much closer to the house.

Book the day before in August, take the earliest departure you can, and bring more water and sunscreen than you think. Everything gets wet: dry bags are worth the few euros.

Aiguèze

Another of the Plus Beaux Villages de France, balanced on a cliff at the mouth of the Ardèche gorges. Cobbled lanes, a saracen tower, vaulted passages, and a short rampart walk that ends looking vertically down at the river a hundred metres below. It takes forty-five minutes to see and is worth the drive for that alone — best combined with lunch at Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche just underneath.

Pont du Gard

The highest Roman aqueduct bridge still standing: three tiers of arches carrying water 48 m above the Gardon, built in the 1st century to supply Nîmes, and UNESCO-listed. What surprises most people is not the scale but the state of it.

Walking onto the site is free; you pay for parking, and that single €9 ticket per car also covers the museum, the film, the children's space and the Mémoires de Garrigue trail through the scrub. Guided tours climb the 80 steps to the third tier and walk the water channel itself (~€15). Open until 20:00 in July and August.

The river is the best part. The banks are a swimming spot and you can rent a canoe to paddle under the arches.

After dark: the monument is floodlit at dusk from 15 May to 20 September, with a 20-minute sound-and-light show at 22:30 from 4 July to 30 August. Go early in the morning or stay for the evening — midday in August is hot, exposed and crowded.

Palais des Papes & Pont d'Avignon

The largest Gothic palace in the world, and for most of the 14th century the seat of the papacy: nine popes ruled Christendom from these rooms. Fifteen thousand square metres of it — the equivalent of four Gothic cathedrals. Twenty-odd spaces are open, including the Chambre du Cerf, Clement VI's private room, painted with hunting and fishing scenes rather than saints, and the frescoes of Matteo Giovannetti in the Saint-Jean chapel. Finish on the terraces, which look over the courtyard, the city and the Rhône.

Then the Pont Saint-Bénezet — the bridge of the song — with four of its original twenty-two arches left, abandoned to the river's floods in the 17th century.

Allow 1½ to 2 hours for the palace, more if you take the HistoPad tablet and read everything. Book online in summer to skip a 30–45 minute queue.

In July the Festival d'Avignon takes over the city — thrilling, and completely full. Decide which of those two experiences you came for.

Villeneuve-lès-Avignon

The quiet side of the river, where the cardinals built their houses. The Chartreuse du Val de Bénédiction is one of the largest Carthusian monasteries in France — cloisters, cells and gardens, and almost no crowds. Fort Saint-André, up the hill, has the finest view there is back across the Rhône to Avignon and the Palais.

Théâtre antique d'Orange

The best-preserved Roman theatre in the western world, and the only one anywhere that still has its complete stage wall — 103 m long, 37 m high, which Louis XIV called the finest wall in his kingdom. Built under Augustus, it seated 9,000 and still does: the audio-guided visit is good, but if there is a concert or an opera on while you are here, go. The acoustics are the point.

Family animations run 4 July–13 August. The Arc de Triomphe at the north edge of town, carved with the establishment of the Pax Romana, is part of the same UNESCO listing and takes ten minutes.