/ While at Les Baux-des-Provence in the south of France you want to visit the museum and Château out on the plateau at the end of the pedestrian lane. We also take you on another walk through the narrow, peaceful pedestrian lanes of this historic stone village, carved into the steep plateau.
The old castle was attacked back in the 1600s but there are dramatic ruins and many parts of the Château still standing. They even built houses inside stone caves they carved out of the limestone. The Citadel has a steep staircase you can climb to gain a spectacular view over the countryside, with extensive olive groves reaching to the distant Alpilles Mountains. On the other side you look down on the stone village, dramatically framed by a valley and more mountains.
Among the exhibits at the Château is an ancient sling, a model of a trébuchet that was used back in the Middle Ages, which could sling large boulders 200 yards, and there is a battering ram, another ancient weapon of war
This is the perfect naturally fortified site, so it's no wonder people have been living here for so long, especially well-protected back in the Middle Ages, a time of fraught and peril. The Knights who ruled from here were very powerful, controlling about 80 other towns and villages throughout the region.
There is an ongoing violent history, battling back and forth with attackers from Barcelona in the Catalan area of what is now Spain to the west, and various invaders from the Eastern side as well as the Saracens, Muslim invaders coming up from Africa, so Les Baux-des-Provence was a hot bed of contention, surviving fighting that went on for centuries, as shown in the castle museum and historic site.