Colorado Provencal, ochre quarries near Rustrel, Luberon, France.
A stone’s throw from Apt, at the foot of the Plateau of Albion, the village of Rustrel continues to benefit from the fame of its impressive neighbour: the Provençal Colorado, given its advantageous name in the fifties by Abbot Martel, a church cleric who was passionate about his native Luberon and who was also responsible for tracing the line of the GR6 hiking trail. There are none of the vertiginous gorges here that you might expect, but a landscape reminiscent of the Far West, coloured with broad, sensuous strokes of colour, from ivory through to brick red. A bed of precious ochre that kept the families fed that exploited the quarry for over a century from 1871, when Jean Allemand set up the first ochre-washing works in the country. (There are 25 different colours on the site!) At the peak of its activity, in 1929, the ochre industry produced 40,000 ton of pigment, of which a considerable amount came from Rustrel. The last man to work the ochre bed in Rustrel retired in 1992 and only one company, the “Société des Ochres de France”, still exploits the ochre at Gargas in the Apt region. “Progress” means that chemical colourings have tolled the death knell of ochre exploitation and turned the Provençal Colorado into a pleasant place to go for a walk.
Size: 4928px × 3264px
Location: Rustrel, Colorado Provencal, Luberon, France
Photo credit: © Manfred Glueck / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ancient, colorado, de, france, heart, iron, luberon, ochre, provencal, provence, quarries, rustrel, silicate, site
