Félix Gras

It is a ruined bridge not far from the Palais des Papes. The bridge was built in the Middle Ages — before the arrival of the Papacy — perhaps partly to allow the local bishop to cross the river to Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, where the church authorities had installed themselves because of Avignon's then-infamous dirt and lawlessness.The legend of the bridge's building is that a local shepherd, Benezet (a dialect form of Benedict) was inspired by angels to build a bridge. When his appeals to the town authorities proved fruitless, he picked up a vast block of stone and hurled it into the river, to be the bridge's foundation stone. Convinced by this demonstration of divine will, the bridge was swiftly built. The poor shepherd boy was canonised, and his chapel remains on the surviving portion of the bridge.The bridge was built with 22 arches, reaching across to the tower of Philippe le Bel via small mid-stream islands. Over the centuries, as the islands shifted and merged into today's île de la Barthelasse, the bridge was repeatedly lost to floods and repeatedly rebuilt; after a series of 17th-century floods, it was abandoned and only 4 of the 22 arches remain. A multilingual audio tour of

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