A Stone Farmhouse With a Courtyard And a Vineyard In a First-Century Roman Town

The Mas des Arcs is a nineteenth-century stone farmhouse, built partly from stones recycled from Roman buildings. In the cellar you can see a whole section of wall built with these stones. The house is built around a small courtyard with a wrought iron gate. Up until the middle of the twentieth century it was the farmhouse for a working farm. There is the base of an old olive oil press in the cellar. In the living room there is a huge working fireplace that the farmers used for their cooking; there are logs to burn in it if the day is cool.

The house is set on more than an acre and a half of land, with a small vineyard, a pine grove and a swimming pool. In the winter and early spring there are daffodils and other flowering bulbs, in the summer the fragrance of our lavender. There are fig trees, plumtrees, cherry trees and almond trees on the grounds and muscat grape vines in the courtyard and on a sunny south wall. This means blossoms in the winter and spring and fruit that you can pluck and eat in the summer and fall. We have planted herbs---rosemary, thyme, sage, tarragon and winter savory---that you can use in your cooking along with the leaves of a bay tree that stands outside the kitchen, protected from the winter cold by a huge old Cedar of Lebanon.

We spend a lot of time in our house in Vaison, so we have tried to make it as attractive and comfortable as possible. There are antique wooden shop signs and folk art---Haitian, Balinese, Mexican, French and American--on the walls. There are several Persian rugs on the floor that we brought back from Iran; we found one of them in a black tent of the Q'ash Q'ai nomads. There are also some of our own paintings and rugs. We do ask you not to smoke inside the house.

Downstairs the house has a large living room/dining room/library with a fireplace, a TV and a radio/ CD/tape player, a lavatory, the sun room and a large kitchen, equipped with five-burner, two-oven stove, a dishwasher, coffee maker, toaster and food processor. There is a clothes washer in the back for laundry. Upstairs there are four double bedrooms---three with two-person beds and one with twin beds---and one single bedroom, so the house can take up to nine people. There is also a crib in case you will be traveling with an infant. There are two bathrooms upstairs, one with a shower and one with a bath and shower. Across the courtyard are the ping-pong room and another lavatory. The house is well supplied with dining, bed and bath linens and is well-heated for the colder months. On the grounds there are several fragments of Roman architecture. There is plenty of room for parking. Outside the kitchen door there is a dining area facing the vineyard, where we have most of our meals during the warmer weather.

The house has Wi Fi and renters can have a bottle a day of wine made partly from the vines of our vineyard.

The house is set on more than an acre and a half of land, with a small vineyard, a pine grove and a swimming pool. In the winter and early spring there are daffodils and other flowering bulbs, in the summer the fragrance of our lavender. There are fig trees, plum trees, cherry trees and almond trees on the grounds and muscat grape vines in the courtyard and on a sunny south wall. This means blossoms in the winter and spring and fruit that you can pluck and eat in the summer and fall. We have planted herbs---rosemary, thyme, sage, tarragon and winter savory---that you can use in your cooking along with the leaves of a bay tree that stands outside the kitchen, protected from the winter cold by a huge old Cedar of Lebanon.

We spend a lot of time in our house in Vaison, so we have tried to make it as attractive and comfortable as possible. There are antique wooden shop signs and folk art---Haitian, Balinese, Mexican, French and American--on the walls. There are several Persian rugs on the floor that we brought back from Iran; we found one of them in a black tent of the Q'ash Q'ai nomads. There are also some of our own paintings and rugs. We do ask you not to smoke inside the house.

Downstairs the house has a large living room/dining room/library with a fireplace, a TV and a radio/ CD/tape player, a lavatory, a sun room and a large kitchen, equipped with five-burner, two-oven stove, a dishwasher, coffee maker, toaster and food processor. There is a clothes washer in the back for laundry. Upstairs there are four double bedrooms---three with two-person beds and one with twin beds---and one single bedroom, so the house can take up to nine people. There is also a crib in case you will be traveling with an infant. There are two bathrooms upstairs, one with a shower and one with a bath and shower. Across the courtyard are the ping-pong room and another lavatory. The house is well supplied with dining, bed and bath linens and is well-heated for the colder months. On the grounds there are several fragments of Roman architecture. There is plenty of room for parking. Outside the kitchen door there is a dining area facing the vineyard, where we have most of our meals during the warmer weather.

Vaison has a lively musical scene. It calls itself the European Choral City and is famous for its Choralies, a triennial festival where choruses from all over Europe come to sing in the Roman theater and other sites in the city. But there are more intimate music programs all the time, in the Roman theater, in the churches, at the Chateau de la Villasse. And serious dance is produced at the Roman theater in July. Once when we were there a rock group had a gig at the Roman theater. It was so loud that we decided we would give back $100 for any night that renters said they were disturbed by sound from the theater. Fortunately concerts like that are very rare; we have rarely been asked for a refund. On the whole noise isn't too much of a problem. Although the house is only a six minute walk from the center of town, it is in a greenbelt and it's oriented toward the vineyard, which is surrounded by a high hedge that not only keeps out noise but makes it very private. Mainly from the front bedroom you can often hear the traffic from a secondary road a few hundred feet away and a few evenings in the summer you can hear the music from Roman theater. But as one of our friends says, 'The vibrant life of your 2000-year-old Provençal town against the occasional noise? It's worth it!'

We bought the Mas des Arcs in 1989 and spend time there at least twice a year. We love our house in France and hope you will too.