An invitation to the medieval, privately owned villa of Le Grand Banc, in the Luberon, promises surprise and drama, and not only because it’s perched 300 feet up on an escarpment of juniper, olive, cypress, and holm oak that feels as vast, remote, and wild as Africa’s Great Rift Valley.
This is not the Provence of popular imagining, not the prettified Peter Mayle version of tidy lavender fields and postcard-perfect towns. Here deep canyons rip through the landscape, vultures glide on the thermal currents, wild boars rustle below and beyond, and the ever present mistral can crescendo from a whisper to a howl, all in the course of a summer’s day.
