The belvedere lay-by on the D15 at golden hour

Coming up from Cavaillon, the D15 rounds a bend and Gordes appears whole — dry-stone houses piled in tiers up a limestone spur, the castle and the church on top, the Luberon behind. A signed lay-by and terrace sit exactly at the point where the composition works, and this is the frame that put the village on every poster of Provence.

It is a wide-angle place with a close-up trick. The obvious shot is the couple small on the terrace wall with the village filling the background; the better one is often a long lens from the far end of the lay-by, compressing the stacked roofs into a solid wall of stone behind them. Either way the village is the subject and the people are the scale.

The viewpoint faces roughly east, which decides everything. Morning light comes from behind the village and leaves the facades flat and grey; the last two hours before sunset put the sun behind you and rake the dry-stone walls into amber. That is also the window when the terrace is at its busiest — worth arriving early and holding a position. In winter the low sun hits the same faces even more directly, with clear air and almost nobody there.

Practical: it is a roadside stop on a road with real traffic and no pavement — park in the lay-by, cross carefully, and keep children and dresses well back from the edge of the tarmac. The terrace is small and shared with tour coaches that stop for five minutes at a time; the gaps between them are your frames. There is no shelter, and the mistral funnels along this valley.