Lourmarin Village
— — the gold the limestone holds until evening.
Not only on a wall.
“The village at the southern foot of the Luberon, where the Combe de Lourmarin gorge opens out into the Pays d'Aix. Stone houses the colour of late wheat, a Renaissance château on the rise above the rooftops, plane trees over the café terraces in the place de l'Ormeau. The Friday market fills the streets by mid-morning and is gone by lunch. Albert Camus lived his last two years here and is buried in the small cemetery on the edge of the village. People come to find his grave and stay for the afternoon.
Lourmarin Village, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Lourmarin sits at the southern foot of the Luberon massif in the Vaucluse département of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, where the limestone Combe de Lourmarin gorge cuts through the range and links the Pays d'Apt to the Aix basin roughly thirty kilometres south. The commune covers about 23 square kilometres at a village-centre elevation of 224 metres, with a population just over 1,100. It is one of the official Plus Beaux Villages de France, the national association that has designated roughly 175 villages since 1982. The nearest larger towns are Cadenet to the south and Cucuron to the east; Aix-en-Provence lies within an hour by car.
The Château de Lourmarin rises on a low ridge at the western edge of the village, the older medieval keep and the early-Renaissance wing built between roughly 1475 and 1526 by the Agoult family. It is generally cited as one of the first Renaissance châteaux constructed in Provence. By the nineteenth century it stood in ruin; the industrialist Robert Laurent-Vibert bought it in 1920 and willed it to the Académie des Sciences, Agriculture, Arts et Belles-Lettres d'Aix, which still runs it as an artists' residence and concert venue. The pale, faintly golden limestone of the village comes from the Luberon itself, and the same stone carries up into the houses, the bell tower, and the dry walls that climb the slopes.
The Friday morning market is the practical anchor of the week. Stalls fill the place de l'Ormeau and the surrounding lanes from about eight until noon, then the village empties for lunch. The Château de Lourmarin is open most of the year for self-guided visits, with seasonal hours and a small admission. Albert Camus and his wife Francine are buried in the village cemetery on the eastern edge; visitors leave stones and pens on the grave. The novelist Henri Bosco lies in the same cemetery. Lourmarin sits roughly thirty kilometres north of Aix-en-Provence, reached by road from the south through Cadenet. Lavender south of the massif peaks from late June through early July.