Saint Siffret, a Village Lost in Time
Most villages in France, if they are truly historic, have a castle that dominates its skyline. Saint Siffret has two.
The first, the Protestant castle show in the image above, was actually a private residence with fancy walls surrounding it. (A rich businessman from Uzes took to calling it a “castle” in the 1600s.) The second, the Chateau de la Commanderie, the tower of which can just be seen poking above the trees to the left, dates to the 12th century, and was standing strong two hundred years before the first home in Saint Siffret was built.
During prehistoric times, a rocky rise only three miles away from Uzes was home to a large number of troglodyte dwellings (shelters made of the spacious hollows within limestone rock). Houses were eventually built atop the rocky spur, which gives Saint Siffret the feeling of an acropolis.
The village was named after Saint Siffran, a bishop of Carpentras, though no one has ever been able to tell us why. The village kept the name for centuries, until the time of the French Revolution, when its name was changed to Pomeyron by the revolutionaries who had a penchant for renaming things (including the days of the week and months of the year). Thankfully, sanity returned soon after, and Saint Siffret regained its honorary name.
Peaceful little Saint Siffret has unfortunately had a long and violent history. It was to the castle that the bishops of Uzes fled when the Black Plague ravaged the land, and they cowered there for the better part of a season while the entire world around them seemed to be dying. And the facade of the village’s 12th century Romanesque church shows the scars of the battles that took place during the Wars of Religion. The church’s façade is pock-marked with the holes left by musket balls and cannon balls that struck the edifice during one such battle.
Saint Siffret will never be confused with a teeming metropolis. Its population rarely passed the 300 mark throughout most of its history, and dropped to about a hundred during times of plague or war (sadly, far too often). But all that began to change approximately 20 years ago when a surge in green tourism led to the village’s population burgeoning to the 1,000 mark. Saint Siffret’s having been lost in time meant that it hadn’t been modernized, or haphazardly rebuilt…and people were quick to appreciate that.
In truth, there isn’t much to Saint Siffret. The village square…isn’t square…and what we have feels like an afterthought. And unlike every other village, it seems, Saint Siffret has no bakery, and there are no real shops to speak of.
But it has a pretty bell tower that is open to the elements, with an iron campanile that sounds out the hour. And a charming little area beneath it is called the “Place de la Dance,” where one assumes village celebrations were held long ago.
But how beautiful it is!
Strolling through the village–for that is what one does here, is a delight. Everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, you will find something beautiful: an old door; wisteria that drifts over a stone wall; faces carved into the stone above doorways; beautiful-weathered old doors.
The historic heart of the village, with its narrow streets that twist and turn their way along the hillside, are lined on both sides by tastefully restored village houses.
The author of a web site devoted to the most charming villages of the Uzeges probably said it best. “Saint Siffret reveals itself to the visitor as an ancient village that has been lost in time.”
Covered passageways…
Just off the Sentier des Ecoliers (the Schoolchildren’s Path), a medieval-era stairway…
And in the garrigue at the top of the village, a capitelle village. In the Provence across the river, the town of Gordes trumpets its collection of capitelles. Saint Siffret has one that is every bit as pretty (actually prettier). The capitelles, surprising in their number, stand…quiet, humble, and essentially unvisited among the oaks at the top of the village (ask at the marie for directions).
Saint Siffret doesn’t shout. It doesn’t have to. The light plays on the village houses by day…and becomes magical at night when the amber lights come on (lights set into the stone at your feet highlight its oldest and most narrow passages).
We walk to the entrance of the village almost every evening and take a seat on the stone wall there. The beautiful valley that Saint Siffret overlooks comes into view. The Mont Bouquet rises powerfully in the background, and you can spy the far-away outline of the castle of Baron farther to the west.
And then…
