The village of Caromb in the Vaucluse is a place you pass through on your way to somewhere else. Caromb has a quiet mystique, and like many Provençal villages, it is bathed in the dappled light of ancient plane trees. According to local legends, Caromb was once the haven of …

I find myself increasingly comfortable listening to conversations I don’t understand. Throaty vowels, rusty consonants, over half a dozen languages being spoken at once; French, Spanish, Catalan, American, Austrian, Italian, Romani during the Gypsy Festival, Pélerinage Gitan, in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Listening with our minds instead of our hearts, language often limits …

Immortalized in Dante’s Inferno, Alyscamps, one of the most famous historical burial grounds outside of Rome, is a short walk from the centre of Arles in the southwestern corner of Provence. The day my tour group visited, there was no one else there except a few stray cats, and the …