Mas de Vaillen, a small country house at the time of the French Revolution, is a listed historic monument. The guided tour provides an insight into life in the bastides of Provence.
Its main attraction is that it has been almost entirely preserved since the French Revolution.
It was added to the Supplementary Inventory of Historic Monuments in 1995 to protect its boxwood garden and wallpaper dating from 1820.
Historical background:
Mas de Vaillen was historically the property of a large family of doctors from Tarascon, annobled just before the French Revolution.
The bastide itself was probably built by Jean-Baptiste Vaillen when he married in 1800, at the age of 67, a wealthy bourgeois from Tarascon who owned a mansion at 2 rue du Progrès (now demolished).
His wife Marthe Roublet was 30 years old and also came from a family of doctors and notables from Tarascon. Her uncle was mayor of Tarascon during the Revolution and wrote numerous medical studies. He was also caught up in the revolutionary turmoil and was the subject of some very violent pamphlets. He went mad, as evidenced by the letters he sent to the National Assembly.
The modest size of this (half) country house was probably suited to their small family, as they only had one daughter, born in 1902.
When Jean-Baptiste Vaillen died in 1815, the house passed to their daughter Marie Margueritte and then to their granddaughter, who died in 1910.
In 1920, the property was sold to Henri Gaudibert (1873-1965), Inspecteur des finances, and his wife Pauline Segond, granddaughter of the feminist writer Juliette Adam. The property remained in this family until 2023.
Adult: 3 €.
