Fontaine-de-Vaucluse

Fontaine- de -Vaucluse is a commune with 661 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2011 ) in the department of Vaucluse, which is part of the Provence- Alpes- Côte d' Azur region. Its original name ( until 1946 ) was " Vaucluse " ( vallis clausa, Latin for closed valley). The Vaucluse department was named in 1793 after the community.

Attractions

Besides Roman artifacts from the 4th, the ruined castle on a rock above the town from the 7th century and several medieval buildings and the church Notre- Dame et Saint- Véran from the 11th century, the town is known mainly as a former residence of the Italian poet Petrarch from, is said to have written here most of his poems in a kind of self-imposed exile. The still existing building is now a museum and attracts - together with the spring grotto impressively described by Petrarch - every year many visitors. Since Vaucluse was the center of the paper industry in the region until the early 18th century, it also the last remaining paper mill built on the banks of the Sorgue in 1974 at a much-visited museum and a center for craft and art.

The Sorgue source

The main attraction of the place is the source of the Sorgue at the foot of a 230 meter high rock wall that feeds the river in times of snow melt with 22 cubic meters per second. Depending on the season and amount of rainfall, the water level varies greatly. In dry periods, a large part of aboveground pool is dry, the flow occurs only a few hundred meters down to the surface. The French diver and oceanographer Jacques -Yves Cousteau explored systematically the underground caves and spring system with his team in several dives first.

The origin of the source, however, was only in 1985 finally resolved: the lowest point of the siphon is located in 308 meters depth; the source is the only outlet of an underground basin of 1,100 km ², which receives the waters of the Mont Ventoux, the Monts de Vaucluse and the Montagne de Lure.