Five-star hotels in Gordes, the Luberon's hilltop village

Gordes village, the hillside and the valley

The village stands on a limestone promontory at about 370 metres, rising some 120 metres above the plain of the Calavon and facing the Luberon mountain. The commune is much larger than the village: it covers 48 km², from 635 metres in the Monts de Vaucluse to 111 metres in the plain to the south-west, and counted 1,661 inhabitants in 2023. Les Imberts, the largest of its old hamlets, lies in the valley about 5 km south-west.

For a five-star stay the choice is simple. Airelles Gordes, La Bastide sits at the top of the village on Rue de la Combe, overlooking the historic centre. Les Bories & Spa lies about 2 km from the centre on the road to Sénanque Abbey, in gardens on the heights of Gordes.

Gordes belongs to Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, and the regional tourism board notes that the American magazine Travel + Leisure named it the most beautiful village in the world. Ansouis, Ménerbes, Roussillon and Lourmarin, also in the Luberon, share the same label.

A fortress village that drew painters

A charter of 30 November 1031 already mentions the castle. Its Renaissance look comes from Bertrand Rambaud de Simiane, who turned the feudal fortress into a more welcoming residence, with large windows on the south front; the carved fireplace, completed in 1541, is 7.20 m long and 4.50 m high. The commune has owned the château since 1811, it housed the town hall offices until 2006, and it now hosts exhibitions all year round.

Gordes was an active Resistance village: on 21 August 1944 a German patrol was attacked, and the next day the village suffered violent reprisals. After the war came the painters. Jean Deyrolle discovered Gordes in 1947 and brought friends including Serge Poliakoff and Victor Vasarely, and Marc Chagall was drawn here too. A Vasarely museum opened in the château in 1970 and remained until 1996.

Airelles Gordes, La Bastide: the Palace in the village

Les Airelles La Bastide de Gordes, which the group calls Airelles Gordes, La Bastide, hides behind an unassuming façade on Rue de la Combe; beyond it, terraced gardens look out over the hills. The Atout France register lists 41 rooms and a five-star classification dated 27 May 2024, and the hotel is one of the Palaces on the official list Atout France updated on 2 June 2026. The house's history goes back more than five centuries; it opened as an Airelles house in 2015 after work by more than 150 artisans, in the spirit of an 18th-century Provençal bastide.

Airelles runs four restaurants here: Jean-François Piège's Clover Gordes, on a terrace facing the valley; La Table de La Bastide, Mediterranean, under chef Pierre Marty; a summer Beefbar; and La Bastide de Pierres, an Italian trattoria in the village facing the château, open from February to September.

The Airelles Spa by Guerlain, under vaulted stone ceilings inspired by Sénanque Abbey, has an indoor pool, a hammam, a sauna and four treatment rooms; outside, the terrace pool is framed by olive trees and cypresses, and a Summer Camp with its own pool takes children from age 3. For 2026 the regional tourism board listed the hotel as open from 23 April to 25 October.

Les Bories & Spa, on the road to Sénanque

Hôtel Les Bories & Spa trades the lanes for space. It lies on the Route de l'Abbaye de Sénanque, about 2 km from the centre of Gordes, and the register lists 34 rooms with a five-star classification dated 13 August 2025. The regional tourism board describes an 8-hectare estate of olive trees, cypresses, oaks, lavender and aromatic gardens. All the rooms face south and have their own terrace.

The estate has an outdoor pool, heated in season, an indoor pool, a spa built around aromatherapy with a hammam and sauna, a fitness room, a tennis court and a private helipad. At dinner, chef Nguyen Danh Cuong pairs Provençal produce with Asian influences; the Bistrot des Bories serves lunch. A shuttle runs to the village centre, a fitness trail leads up to the heart of Gordes, and the GR6 long-distance footpath sets off from the hotel towards Sénanque Abbey. For 2026 the regional listing gave its season as 26 March 2026 to 3 January 2027.

Sénanque Abbey and its lavender

The Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Sénanque lies in a narrow valley 5 km from Gordes, on the D177 towards Venasque. Monks from Mazan, in the Ardèche, founded it on 23 June 1148, the fourth Cistercian abbey in Provence, and building took about 60 years, from the 1160s to 1220. Cistercian monks still live there under the Rule of Saint Benedict and open the church, dormitory, cloister, warming room and chapter house at set hours. Guided visits are in French; for other languages the abbey suggests its HistoPad, available in 11 languages.

The regional tourism board says the site is most photogenic in late spring and early summer, when the lavender is in flower; the monks point out that in the Middle Ages the same ground was their cemetery. The visitors' car park is free and five minutes' walk from the abbey. From 15 March to 30 September the D177 is one-way when leaving, so drivers return to Gordes by continuing towards Venasque and turning onto the D244. On foot, the abbey allows 30 minutes from the village.

The Village des Bories

About 4 km from the village, on the slopes of the Monts de Vaucluse facing the Luberon, a hamlet once called Les Cabanes is now the Village des Bories, a museum of rural life at 270 metres. Its dry-stone huts date from the early 17th century, when farmers clearing new land piled the stones they dug up into walls, terraces and cabins; without a church or a cemetery, the hamlet was temporary housing tied to seasonal farm work. Sheepfolds, bread ovens, wine vats and threshing floors survive.

The poet and actor Pierre Viala began restoring the abandoned site in 1969, the work took eight years, and it was listed as a historic monument in 1977. It opens every day except 25 December and 1 January, until 8 pm in July and August, with car parking on site. The paths are not suitable for pushchairs, so a baby carrier is advised.

In the village: calades, caves and the Tuesday market

Cobbled lanes called calades lead from the square south of the château towards the remains of the old fortifications, including the Porte de Savoie. The church of Saint-Firmin was rebuilt in the 18th century on 13th-century foundations. Next to it, off Rue du Four, the Palais Saint-Firmin and its caves, with troglodyte rooms, cisterns, underground stairways and oil mills, have been listed as historic monuments since 4 March 1998.

A market is held every Tuesday morning, all year round, around the château. Between Gordes and Les Beaumettes, in the hamlet of Les Bouillons, the Moulin des Bouillons keeps a monumental 16th-century olive press and vats cut into the rock, and the Musée du Verre et du Vitrail traces more than 7,000 years of glassmaking.

When to go: lavender, festival and hotel seasons

The regional tourism board names May to October as the best season, with the lavender at Sénanque in flower in late spring and early summer. In August, the Soirées d'été festival brings theatre, jazz and variety shows to the Théâtre des Terrasses, an amphitheatre of 495 seats against the rock in the heart of the village, looking over the plain and the Luberon; the 2026 edition ran from 3 to 10 August.

The two hotels keep different calendars. For 2026, La Bastide was listed as open from 23 April to 25 October, while Les Bories & Spa was listed as open from 26 March 2026 to 3 January 2027, which makes it the five-star option for November, December and the New Year.

Getting to Gordes: TGV, airports and roads

Gordes lies 38 km east of Avignon and its TGV station. Airelles gives the TGV journey from Paris to Avignon as 2 hours 40 minutes, then 30 to 60 minutes by road. The nearest railway stations are Cavaillon and L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

By road, the main access is the D2 from Cavaillon. From the A7, Les Bories directs drivers to exit 25 (Cavaillon), then the N100 towards Apt and the D15 to Gordes. The D15, which continues north to Murs, passes above the Bel-Air rock, the source of the best-known view of the village. Without a car, the regional Zou! bus line 917 links Gordes with Apt, about 45 minutes away, and with Coustellet, where some buses connect towards Avignon; on the timetable in force since 1 September 2026, it runs from Monday to Saturday, but not on public holidays. The car parks at the entrance to the village are paid.

Towards Aix-en-Provence and Arles

Gordes makes a base for more than the Luberon. To the south, the Zou! network's line 909 links Apt, Cadenet and Aix-en-Provence. Arles even appears in Sénanque's own history: at its height the abbey owned four mills, seven granges and a hospital in Arles.