Tarascon and Beaucaire: King René's Castle, the Tarasque and the Troglodyte Abbey

Required Activities

• In the castle of Tarascon, find the 15th-century cell whose walls are covered in ships — medieval boats and war galleys scratched by Catalan sailors held prisoner by the king, alongside a chess board and verses from the Book of Job — then the apothecary of the hôpital Saint-Nicolas in the outbuildings, with over two hundred faience pots from Saint-Jean-du-Désert and Montpellier in its 18th-century panelling

• Cross the Rhône to Beaucaire and walk out along the rock spur to the triangular keep — a plan the record calls unique of its kind — then look down at the ground where, in 1216, the besieged tipped a burning pot of alquitran onto the attackers' wooden siege engines

• At the troglodyte abbey of Saint-Roman, go up onto the terrace and count the graves cut straight into the rock beside the monks' cells, then find the medieval wine press and the 14th-century ditch, ramp and bridge that turned a monastery into a castrum

• Find the Tarasque effigy the town parades and check it against Jacques de Voragine's 13th-century description — half animal, half fish, thicker than an ox, longer than a horse, with teeth like swords — then against the usual Provençal version, with six short bear's legs and a spined tortoise shell