The plague wall, which can be seen close to Gordes, Cabrières d’Avignon and Murs

This is a long building which was built after the great plague of Marseille in 1720.

In May 1920, the "Grand Saint Antoine" boat coming from the East with silk goods to be sold at the great fair of Beaucaire, brings the plague to Marseille which quickly spreads to the rest of Provence.

In order to slow down the plague infection and ideally to get rid of it, the papal vice-legate, who was then in charge of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin, prohibited trades with Marseille from the 1st of August 1920.

Early September 1920, the papal vice-legate decided that a protection was necessary.

Late September, the plague went through Lourmarin canyon and reached Apt. Health security lines are reinforced. 800 guards from the Comtat will then keep that line of protection.

January 1921, in order to protect itself from the plague, the Comtat ensures no more exchanges with Provence and France, and as the maintenance of the Health security lines becomes expensive, the famine settles.

During 1721, a protection wall is being built to avoid further infection and relieve the work of the guards. Its path was entrusted to Mr. Antoine German, a cartographer engineer from Carpentras. He imagined a series of walls and ditches installed in the Calavon plain.

In March 1921, 500 men were mobilized for its construction. The material used for the walls was dry stone. The wall was 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide. The total length described is about 35 kilometers, with over 23 kilometers of walls only.

The construction ended late July 1721 and a thousand papal soldiers are assigned to monitor it, and trading resumed.

In August of the same year, a turnaround event occurred. While the region of Apt and the Luberon managed to contain the disease, it then passed through Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and Beaucaire to reach Avignon. The contadins are replaced by the Provençaux guards to avoid a return of the disease. 20% of the population from the Comtat perished from the plague, while 50% of the population of Marseille has already perished.

The wall is abandoned early 1923, after this plague episode ended, up until mid-1980s when an association decides to promote its preservation.