Note the water fountain saved from the old village
Les Salles-sur-Verdon is not a celebrated architectural gem like Port Grimaud but it’s in a similar vein. It’s the village displaced by the rising water of the bitterly resisted reservoir, the lac de Sainte-Croix. I’m guessing the concept is derivative, architect François Spoerry’s Port Grimaud being about ten years earlier. Les Salles is an idealised Provençal village as Port Grimaud is an idealised Mediterranean fishing village.
So the architecture of the rebuilt Les Salles-sur-Verdon relies on a number of template designs plus a restricted palette. Normally that would horrify me, as it did when I passed this way in 1985; however, the plan has mellowed out over the years and now looks attractive in the quaint way the French have with concrete. It cannot detract that the village is strong on horses and boats, neither being cheap hobbies. So a little lesson maybe in the application of architecture?
The streets aren’t on a grid layout but are hardly marked with repairs. The street lamps appear empty but there are television aerials and aircon units though no phone lines or power lines on poles. The look is too clean: is this somewhere people really live?
The town feels like we are in “Uncanny Valley”. Partly because there’s no old stuff going to ruins as in a “real” Provençal village, partly it seems to be mostly weekenders and holiday lets. The new cemetery has plenty of spaces. Fifty years on and even now, something’s not right; the chiming of the bells saved from the medieval church before it was dynamited and submerged just adds to the spooky feel.
The French have a brutal way with these structural projects and the legacy of the animosity persists even fifty years on.
Memorial to the submerged village
