Villages of character

The most beautiful villages of the Verdon

Out of the 65 communes that LiveVerdon documents, eight villages stand out for an official label, a listed monument or a viewpoint that has become emblematic. This is not a fixed ranking: it is an editorial selection, built from the verified, sourced profiles of each commune — to be read in full, one click away, on each of them.

dronepicr · CC BY 2.0

Plus Beaux Villages de France

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie

Moustiers / Valensole / Riez

Nestled against the Notre-Dame ravine, between two limestone cliffs, Moustiers-Sainte-Marie accumulates labels: Plus Beaux Villages de France, Villages et Cités de caractère, Ville et Métiers d’Art, and founding member of the Parc naturel régional du Verdon since 1997. A five-pointed star, hung from a 135-metre chain stretched between the two cliffs, marks the entrance to the village above the Romanesque chapel of Notre-Dame de Beauvoir. Faience workshops keep alive a craft showcased in the Faience Museum, opened in 1929 and housed in the former hospice.

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Michel Royon · CC0

Plus Beaux Villages de France

Bargème

Haut-Var / left bank

Built at an altitude of 1,097 metres on a rocky spur of the Canjuers plateau, Bargème is the highest village in the Var according to its town hall — and it is one of the official members of the Plus Beaux Villages de France. The ruins of the Château de Sabran-Pontevès, mentioned as early as 1225 and dismantled after the murder of its lords during the Wars of Religion, still dominate lanes hemmed in by a medieval wall with two fortified gates. The twelfth-century Romanesque church of Saint-Nicolas holds an altarpiece of 1525 and bells dated 1504 and 1702.

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MOSSOT · CC BY-SA 3.0

Plus Beaux Villages de France · listed in 2025

Colmars-les-Alpes

Alpine Upper Verdon

Locked between two forts commissioned by Vauban at the end of the 17th century — the Fort de France (1693) and the Fort de Savoie (1695) — Colmars has kept almost all of its fortified wall at the head of the upper Verdon valley, at an altitude of 1,230 metres. The quality commission of the Plus Beaux Villages de France admitted it on 27 September 2025; it thus joins Entrevaux, another stronghold fortified by Vauban in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, listed in 2023. The Fort de Savoie can be visited in summer and offers a trail devoted to Vauban; the Pont-Haut and the Pont Saint-Roch, which span the Verdon, are listed historic monuments.

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Greteck · CC BY-SA 3.0

Plus Beaux Villages de France

Tourtour

Haut-Var / left bank

Built at an altitude of 635 metres on the Beau Soleil hill, Tourtour is nicknamed “the village in the sky of Provence” and is one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France. Its communal oil mill, built in the 17th century, still runs the old way, powered by water, during the olive harvest from November to February. The Place des Ormeaux, the heart of the village since Anne of Austria’s legendary visit in 1638, has eight historic fountains, while the 16th-century Château des Raphélis now houses a municipal gallery.

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Ville de Riez · Statut libre de droit (non vérifié formellement)

Listed ancient remains

Riez

Moustiers / Valensole / Riez

Former capital of the Reii and then a Roman colony — Colonia Julia Augusta Apollinaris Reiorum —, Riez preserves on its plain four granite columns from an ancient temple of the 1st century, standing alone and listed as historic monuments since 1840. Its 5th-century baptistery, one of the few preserved in France along with that of Fréjus, keeps its octagonal plan and its eight ancient columns with Corinthian capitals, listed the same year. The lower town, ringed by a wall rebuilt in 1381-1384, was also the seat of a bishopric from the 5th century until the Revolution.

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Sethy83 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Black truffle

Aups

Haut-Var / left bank

“The Var’s capital of black truffle”, according to the Lacs et Gorges du Verdon tourist office, and nicknamed “the capital of the Haut-Var”, Aups has a Provençal Gothic collegiate church, Saint-Pancrace, built between 1489 and 1503 and registered as a historic monument in 1971. Every Thursday morning from late November to late February, sometimes until mid-March, the Place Mistral hosts a black truffle market, extended each January by a great truffle festival. The Simon Segal Museum, housed in the former Ursuline convent, displays more than 280 paintings from the schools of Toulon, Bourges and Paris, not far from the 1881 obelisk that recalls Aups’s role in the Var uprising of December 1851 against Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’état.

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Francois de Dijon · CC BY-SA 4.0

Caves listed as a natural site (1924)

Villecroze

Haut-Var / left bank

Villecroze backs onto caves hollowed out by seeping water in a tufa cliff that formed beneath a former waterfall, used as a refuge by Benedictine monks before being fortified in 1566 by the lord Nicolas d’Albertas, who built a defensive residence over five levels. Listed as natural sites and monuments since 1924, they can be visited behind the present waterfall, about 35 metres high, at the foot of the old medieval village and its arcades. The Ruou commandery, given to the Templars around 1150, completes this heritage before later becoming a ceramics factory.

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lombiedezombie · CC BY 3.0

The viewpoint over the Grand Canyon

Rougon

Grand Canyon of the Verdon

Perched at the upstream entrance to the Grand Canyon, Rougon has kept a medieval architecture; its schoolteacher, Isidore Blanc, guided Édouard-Alfred Martel’s expedition in 1905, which brought the canyon to public attention. At its feet, the Point Sublime remains one of the Verdon’s most emblematic viewpoints, at the start of the Couloir Samson and the Blanc-Martel trail. Twelve griffon vultures were released here on 16 October 1999, the first link in a reintroduction programme that released 91 of them up to 2005; the colony numbered 416 pairs in 2025 — you can see them gliding above the village.

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Frequently asked questions

Which is the most beautiful village in the Gorges du Verdon?

There is no single official ranking. But Moustiers-Sainte-Marie combines the Plus Beaux Villages de France, Villages et Cités de caractère and Ville et Métiers d’Art labels, with its star hung between the cliffs and its faience tradition.

How many Verdon villages are ranked “Plus Beaux Villages de France”?

Among LiveVerdon’s selection, four villages carry this national label: Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, Bargème (the highest village in the Var according to its town hall), Colmars-les-Alpes (ranked in 2025) and Tourtour, nicknamed “the village in the sky of Provence”.

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