ROSIER is a family story intimately linked to the village of Gordes.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Gordes was a town which had been hit by the exodus of its inhabitants. Like many villages in the Vaucluse plateaus and mountains, the town was at its worst after having suffered severely from the two formidable plagues of poverty and epidemics. They destroyed most of the craft activities and expelled the inhabitants. The houses were abandoned and then destroyed by their owners or by the ravages of time. Some land was then offered free of charge to farmers who wished to come and settle there. Thus, Gordes gradually became a farming village again.

To better understand the ROSIER family history in Gordes, you have to go back to grandfather Joseph, who discovered this hilltop village in the Vaucluse mountains after the Second World War.
Then an architect in Marseille, Joseph ROSIER discovered Gordes by chance. He fell in love with these flat stone walls, wheathered by the passage of time and embracing the sinuous terrain, the beauty of their alignment, the finish of their fittings. He was impressed by the sights, the light and the precison of the lines of the local architecture.

But the village offered a desolate spectacle of ruined houses. Over several months, with the help of the village priest who played the role of real estate broker at the time, he was looking for an old farm to renovate. He ended up purchasing a land on the outskirts of the village for the simple reason that it was served by town water. His project being determined, he built his holiday home stone by stone, the new Provençal anchor for the family.
His son Christian-Jacques would spend all the holidays of his childhood there. Its huts are set against a background of scrubland, bories (stone huts), the place and even its castle. The village became his favourite playground, a way of established solid roots in this landscape. It was to grow and build in Gordes. The adolescent already knew that he would come to live there one day.

At that time, some rare artists were already established in the village, then deserted it. Thus, the painter André Lhote bought a house there and gradually brought his friends: Marc Chagall in 1940, photographer Willy Ronis in 1948, and others.

But in the 1950s, Gordes experienced a new impetus. It attracted a host of artists who found a source of inspiration in its isolation, its light and its landscapes. United by their belonging to the Denise René gallery, Jean Deyrolle, Victor Vasarely, Jean Dewasne… chose Gordes. They attracted many others, loyal visitors or residents.
The life of Christian-Jacques was thus divided between Gordes, animated by these artists' lives, and the town of Marseille. He wanted to become an architect like his father but the latter dissuaded him, thinking that this was not a job for the future. Trained for one year in Fine Arts, he eventually studied law and notary and became a notary's clerk near Marseille. But as soon as the opportunity arose, he set out for Gordes.