Lourmarin

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Administration
Commune of Lourmarin
Location
Longitude	05° 21' 48" W
Latitude	43° 45' 53" N
Country	France
Region	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Department	Vaucluse
Arrondissement	Apt
Canton	Cadenet
Intercommunality	Communauté de communes des Portes du Luberon
Mayor	Blaise Diagne (2001-2008)
Statistics
Altitude	169 m–818 m (avg. 200 m)
Land area¹	20.18 km²
Population² (1999)	1,119
- Density (1999)	55/km²
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	84068/ 84160
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 mi² or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel).

Lourmarin is a town and commune of the Vaucluse département, in southern France.

1 Geography
2 History
3 Sights
4 Miscellaneous
5 External links

[edit] Geography

Lourmarin is located at the foot of the Luberon Massif at the southern debouchement of a pass that runs over the Luberon from Apt on the northern side of the Luberon. The pass divides the Grand Luberon from the Petit Luberon range, an area rich in Neolithic remains and noted for its dramatic massifs and rockscapes. The Aigue Brun brook comes out of the pass and runs just to the west of the village (Aigue is a Provençal word for "water", coming from Latin aqua).

[edit] History

Lourmarin has been settled for at least a thousand years, and was probably a Neolithic campsite before that.

[edit] Sights

Extremely picturesque, the village is a magnet for tourists. Prominent sites are the village itself, the pretty Renaissance castle, the Catholic and Protestant churches and the view from the village of the Proches Bastides, a large fortified farmhouse dating to the Middle Ages. From the village itself it is 20 minute drive down to the Durance River and then about 40 minutes on to Aix-en-Provence.

[edit] Miscellaneous

Albert Camus' tombstone in Lourmarin

Lourmarin was the birthplace of Philippe de Girard (1775-1845), an engineer and inventor of the linen spinning mill, as well as the name-sake for the town of Żyrardów in Poland (a toponym derived from the polonised spelling of Girard's name).

The writers Henri Bosco (1888-1976) and Albert Camus (1913-1960) both lived there and are buried in the local cemetery.

Another famous writer, British expatriate Peter Mayle today lives in Lourmarin. One of his books, A Year in Provence, giving the chronicle of a British expatriate who settled in the village of Ménerbes, was made into a TV series and a film. Another of his books was also made into the film A Good Year (2006) directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, which was filmed nearby in the same region. As a result, in recent decades Luberon and its towns and villages like Lourmarin and Ménerbes, which probably were the lesser known parts of Provence, even in France, became better known in the English-speaking world.

Lourmarin is twinned with Żyrardów, Poland.