Fontaine-de-Vaucluse

Petrarch Library Museum

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Set below a cliff where the castle remains can still be seen, the museum supposedly stands on the same site as the house where the poet lived in the 14th century. A literary memorial, the Petrarch Library Museum preserves the written and artistic heritage of the earliest humanist, Francis Petrarch, and of the poet René Char, who lived near the Sorgue river.

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Welcome into a world of poetry! Your visit starts in a peaceful garden bordered by the Sorgue river, which surges out of a fathomless cave in the rocks just a few steps away. Next you step into the house, where the collections are displayed over two floors.
Fontaine-de-Vaucluse is a site of pilgrimage for poetry-lovers. Stendhal, Georges Sand, Châteaubriand, Lamartine, and of course René Char loved the atmosphere in this village.
The museum and its specialist library are well known to French and Italian scholars, holding about 3,500 books and an iconography of drawings and prints relating to Petrarch, Laura and Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, as well as a modern art collection. Letters, drawings, manuscripts and photographs present artists such as Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Arpad Szenes, Vieira da Silva, Joan Miró, Zao Wou-Ki, Pablo Picasso, Wifredo Lam, or Joseph Sima.
The Petrarch Library Museum is part of the Maisons des Illustres network.

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