Moustiers-Sainte-Marie is a Provençal village wedged into a gap between two cliffs at the entrance to the Verdon gorges. A metal star hangs from a chain across the void, and a zigzag path climbs to the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Beauvoir. The village has lived on faience since the seventeenth century.
It is one of the most spectacular in Provence. The village is built on both sides of the Rioul ravine, straddling a torrent, in a notch in the cliff, its tall houses stacked up the slopes. Above, two limestone walls rise, and between them, strung from one side to the other two hundred metres up, a chain carrying a gilded star.
Legend has it that a knight of the Blacas family, returned from the crusades, hung it in fulfilment of a vow. The history is more prosaic: the chain has been replaced several times, most recently in 1957, and the present star is aluminium. None of which spoils the effect.
This is the walk to do, and it explains the village. A paved zigzag path, punctuated by fourteen oratories, climbs from the centre to the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Beauvoir, set against the cliff. Twenty minutes of steady ascent, with shade for half of it.
The chapel, Romanesque and Gothic, has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages, known for its "respite" miracles: stillborn children were brought here in the hope of a baptism. The interior is plain, the carved walnut door remarkable.
But you climb mainly for the view: the village rooftops below, the ravine, the plain, and to the east the entrance to the Verdon gorges. It is the best viewpoint in Moustiers, and it is free.
Moustiers has made faience since 1679, when an Italian monk is said to have brought the secret of a particularly pure white glaze. The village had as many as a dozen potteries, declined in the nineteenth century, then was revived in the 1920s.
Today around fifteen workshops are still at work, some open to visitors, where you can see throwing, glazing and hand-painting. The Faience Museum, small and well done, covers three centuries of production, from Bérain decoration to grotesques. Beware of shops in the centre selling imported ware: the genuine workshops are identifiable and the tourist office keeps a list.
Moustiers is the gateway to the Verdon gorges, and that is its problem: in July and August thousands of visitors pass through on their way to the lake or the canyon. Parking becomes difficult and the lanes are saturated.
Come in spring or in October, or early in the morning in summer. In May and June the lavender fields of the Valensole plateau, twenty minutes away, are not yet in flower but the region is green and empty.
Moustiers is not a destination on its own. Lac de Sainte-Croix is ten minutes away, the Verdon Grand Canyon begins just beyond, and the Valensole plateau is twenty minutes off. The logical day: Moustiers in the morning, the lake or the canyon in the afternoon.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 90 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
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