Sundial on Château de Gordes / Gordes Castle - Gordes (Vaucluse, PACA, France)
N 43° 54.662 E 005° 11.996
31T E 676642 N 4864344
Depicted austere stone sundial decorates southern facade of the Gothic-Renaissance Château de Gordes (Gordes Castle), one of the key landmarks of picturesque village Gordes.
Waymark Code: WM12BGA
Location: Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Date Posted: 04/20/2020
Views: 1
Depicted austere stone sundial decorates southern facade of the Gothic-Renaissance Château de Gordes (Gordes Castle), one of the key landmarks of picturesque village Gordes.
Stone, on the wall mounted sundial dated 1868, bears Latin inscription "Phoebo absente nil sum" which means "If Phoebus absents, I'm nothing" - and Phoebus is personification of Sun (and/or god Apollo...).
For a thousand years Château de Gordes rules the village of Gordes, built by Guillaume d'Agoult in 1031. The medieval castle, built on a spur at the top of the village, was rebuilt between 1525 and 1541 in the Renaissance style by Bertrand Rambaud de Simiane. Since then, it has had a double face: a northern facade has still Romanesque-Gothic castle-fort appearance but the southern facade is pure Renaissance-style chateau. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the castle does not seem to have undergone any significant modification, its distant owners being content to collect the revenues of the seigneury. The Revolutionaries seized the castle, but did not destroy it, around 1789. The castle was listed as a French historic monument on July 4, 1931.
Source: excerpted and translated from
Wikipedia