Driving Tours

Exploring the Gorges du Loup

After paying your respects to Matisse at the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, you can take D2210 through some of the Riviera's most luxuriant countryside. The Gorges du Loup isn't as dramatic as the Grand Canyon du Verdon but still features a scenic 13km (8-mile) drive that loops along the gorge's eastern and western edges. This drive showcases waterfalls, most notably the Cascades des Demoiselles, with its partially fossilized plant life, and the 39m (130-ft.) Cascade de Courmes. Jagged glacial holes, best exemplified by the Saut du Loup, can also be found at the valley's northeastern end.

Gourdon, the only village along the gorge's western rim, has a year-round population of only 60 (100 if you include the population of the region immediately nearby), but in summer, its population swells into something approaching a honky-tonk tourist trap. If you stop here, ignore the dozens of souvenir shops and visit the immense and foreboding 13th-century Château de Gourdon (tel. 04-93-09-68-02; www.chateau-gourdon.com). The château houses two completely separate museums: Musée Historique features a collection of arms, furniture, sculpture (including The Martyrdom of San Sebastian by El Greco), and paintings (including Descent from the Cross by Rubens). Entrance costs 4€ ($5.20) for adults, 3€ ($3.90) for students and persons 10 to 18.

The château's other museum, which, frankly, we find more intriguing, and which draws bigger crowds, is the Musée des Arts Décoratifs et de la Modernité (sometimes abbreviated to simply Musée de la Modernité). Established in 2003, its collections focus on about 800 pieces of Art Deco furniture from the 1920s and 1930s, and include some very fine pieces by such arts pioneers as Ruhlmann, Majorelle, Charou, and Mallet-Stevens, some of whose works profoundly affected the aesthetics of the Jazz Age on either side of the Atlantic. Entrance costs 10€ ($13) for adults, and 8€ ($10) for students and persons ages 10 to 18. Children under 10 are discouraged from entering because of the fragility of some of the pieces. Note that these museums are privately owned, and not in any way associated with any national or local government entity. Both of them are open June to September, daily from 11am to 1pm and 2 to 7pm, and October to May Wednesday to Monday from 2 to 6pm. Acquiring a ticket to either museum allows access to the château's formal, topiary-studded gardens, whose layout was designed by Le Nôtre, whose other works included some of the gardens at Versailles. Visits to the gardens are allowed during opening hours of the museum only.

A small Rousseau portrait, among other works, can found at the Musée de Peinture Naïve. The magnificent 17th-century formal garden is graced with topiaries often photographed by gardening magazines. The museums are open June through September daily from 11am to 1pm and 2 to 7pm, and October through May, Wednesday through Monday from 2 to 6pm. A combined ticket to the garden and museums is 4€ ($5.20).

On the southeastern edge of the gorge, at Pont-du-Loup, go to La Confiserie des Gorges du Loup, rue Principale (tel. 04-93-59-32-91), where you can sample sweets while watching the confectioners sugarcoat tangerines or chocolate-dip orange peels. Less than a kilometer farther south, the 15th-century Gothic church at Le Bar-sur-Loup features a morbid Danse Macabre, a 15th-century painting of fallen and dancing humans whose souls are being wrested away by black demons and then weighed by St. Michael before being tossed into the pits of hell. Speculation links the anonymous work of art to the plague.

After taking in this sober vision, backtrack to Pont-du-Loup and travel 8km (5 miles) east to Tourrettes-sur-Loup, where you can find accommodations in an unspoiled medieval village on a rocky bluff high above a violet-filled valley.

If you're coming from Cannes, take A85 for 21km (13 miles) northwest to Grasse, and then travel east for 6km (3 3/4 miles) on Route 2085, where you'll turn north at Magagnosc, following D3 for 8km (5 miles) north to Gourdon, at the edge of the gorge. From Nice, take E80 for 3km (2 miles) west to Route 2085, and then drive 26km (16 miles) west to Magagnosc, to follow the same path north to Gourdon. Once in Gourdon, continue north on D3 along the western rim of the gorge; after 6km (4 miles), turn right onto D6 to return south along its eastern lip. Turn east on D2210 at Pont-du-Loup for a 8km (5-mile) drive to Tourrettes-sur-Loup, or continue on to Vence, another 3km (2 miles), where you can turn south on Route 36 for a 9km (5 1/2-mile) drive back to the coast.

For more information, contact the Office de Tourisme, 22 cours Henri-Cresp, 06130 Grasse (tel. 04-93-36-66-66); place Grand-Jardin, 06140 Vence (tel. 04-93-58-06-38); or 5 Route de Vence, 06140 Tourrettes-sur-Loup (tel. 04-93-24-18-93).