Nyons: Black Olives, the Roman Bridge and the Last Scourtin Maker

Required Activities

• Visit the Vignolis cooperative in Nyons, founded in 1923, walk its olive museum and taste AOP Nyons olive oil

• Cross the Pont Roman at Nyons, one arch of about 40 m thrown more than 18 m above the Eygues and inaugurated in 1409, and work out from the stonework where the toll tower once stood at its middle and the redoubts that guarded each end

• Watch a scourtin being woven at the Scourtinerie in Nyons, the last workshop in France still making them, on machines the Fert family has run since 1882 — and find the ones now woven as floor mats and table rounds rather than press filters

• Walk the Promenade de la Digue to the old mills of the 18th and 19th centuries at the foot of the Pont Roman and follow the oil through them — millstone, press, then the settling to part the oil from the water — then go next door into the 1730s soap works and find the tanks for the lye and the vats that held the lamp oil