Palais des Papes

The Palais des Papes rises above Avignon with walls nearly twenty feet thick and six soaring towers. This is the largest gothic palace in the world, built in the fourteenth century when popes fled the chaos of Rome to turn this city into the center of the Christian world. Pope Benedict the Twelfth commissioned the first section, but it was his successor, Clement the Sixth, who bought the entire city from Queen Joanna of Naples to secure his absolute authority over the papal residence.