The Spring Issue

Everyone pictures Provence in July, under the lavender, and that is exactly why we would argue for a few weeks earlier. By May the light is already the famous one, the village markets are in full swing, and the roads have none of the August crawl — the lavender on the Valensole plateau does not really peak until late June, but the countryside is at its greenest and most livable in the weeks before.

The idea to build a trip around is the mas: the old Provençal farmhouse, thick-walled and shuttered, usually with a pool and a view of vines or the Luberon, that owners now let by the week. It comes with a little self-sufficiency — you will shop, you will cook some nights, you will want a car — and that is the whole point. A mas turns a holiday into the experience of living somewhere for a while.

Plan the week around market days rather than monuments. Every town has its morning: the cloth and produce spill along the streets, you gather a wedge of cheese, a bottle of rosé and the makings of lunch, and the afternoon takes care of itself. The perched stone villages of the Luberon — Gordes, Roussillon on its ochre cliffs, Ménerbes — string into one good day of driving and stopping.

For contrast, point the car south to the Camargue, the flat, wild river-delta where white horses and pink flamingos share the marshes and the light goes wide and silver. It is a different Provence entirely, and a reminder of how much this one small region holds.

— Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief