Abbaye de Montmajour

Montmajour stands on a low limestone outcrop that was an island in the marshes before the plain was drained, and it is the opposite of the town in every way — huge, empty, unornamented and quiet. The Benedictine abbey has a twelfth-century church, a cloister with carved capitals, a rock-cut hermitage chapel and a square keep that can be climbed for a view over the Alpilles, the plain and Arles in the distance.

The photography is about mass and light. Bare Romanesque stone with narrow openings means hard-edged shafts inside the church and the crypt, and a cloister that alternates deep shade and full sun as you walk round it. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon give the strongest raking light through the openings; flat overcast makes the whole thing grey and much less interesting.

It is ten minutes north of Arles on the Fontvieille road and it is ticketed, run as a national monument with fixed hours and a weekly closing day. Almost nobody comes, which is the real reason to include it — the same session that fights for space in the arena has the cloister to itself.

The keep stair is a tight spiral and the terrace at the top is exposed; there is no shade anywhere on the rock, so summer afternoons here are genuinely hot.