Mur de la Peste

This morning we went on another slightly crazy mission – to find a wall! Not just any wall, but a Plague Wall (Mur de la Peste).

On 14 May 1720 a ship brought a deadly plague to Marseille and it ran wild through the population. By the end of August it was responsible for 1,000 deaths a day. In Provence, panic reigned and everything was done to stop those fleeing from Marseille from reaching the villages still spared the sickness.

It was decided to build a 25 km wall, across the countryside, to create a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to stop the epidemic spreading. It was to be a drystone wall 6 feet high and 2 feet wide. Work began in March 1721 with each village having to send a contingent of workmen with their own tools. This was fraught with problems, as the communities were none too keen on sending wallers, but it did eventually get finished by the end of July.

It was patrolled by soldiers, but it was not really meant to stop people, just to slow them down so soldiers could intercept them. The wall was abandoned when the plague subsided. Whether the wall was of any use is not really known.

Most of the wall has now disappeared, but there are some sections still in existence on the Plateau de Vaucluse and a walk has been devised that follows some of it. We set out from Cabrières d’Avignon, followed path signs, climbed up on a stony track and eventually found markers (like this one). We think we saw crumbling bits of wall, but then they may have just been crumbling bits of any wall! If we had continued for a while longer, we would probably have found some of the actual wall, but lunch beckoned and the Boulangerie was likely to close, so we turned round and went back. A nice walk though and one we might complete one day.


The building of walls to keep out ‘pests’, people who, it is thought, might cause us problems, is nothing new then. Now we have a Prime Minister who is building one (physically and virtually) and someone who wants to be President has plans to build one.