**Roussillon, History, Traditions, and Culture**

Since prehistoric times, evidence suggests that the colorful rocks were already used to build sturdy houses. This was certainly the case under the Gaulish tribes. The name Roussillon is believed to come from the Latin name “Ruscilius,” who owned a Gallo-Roman estate in the area.

The earliest record of the city’s name dates back to 989 as “de Rossillione,” indicating that two years earlier, a castrum had been built on a mound.

Ochre from the earth was extracted first with picks and bars, then with explosives. But it was in 1780 that Jean Etienne Astier, a resident of Roussillon, proposed washing the extracted rocks with high-pressure water jets and then drying the resulting clay in tanks. This process allowed him to separate the sand from the pure ochre, which, once dried, could be used as a pigment. Becoming the first ochre producer in France, he amassed a fortune from this activity, extracting up to 40,000 tons in a single year!

But all good things must come to an end: in 1929, the creation of synthetic dyes, which were cheaper and easier to obtain, led to the near-total cessation of extraction, leaving only one company still in operation today.

Although the rocks are stunning to observe, it is strictly prohibited to extract them today due to geological stability concerns.

A well-known sad legend in the Luberon explains why the stones are red: In the 13th century, Dame Sermonde was a beautiful young woman married to the lord of Roussillon, Raymond of Avignon. This man was known to have only one true passion in life: hunting. He would leave the castrum for days, tracking every beast he encountered. Left alone, Dame Sermonde grew fond of a troubadour of the court (or a page and squire, in other versions), Guillaume de Cabestan. The two lovers spent hours together, and the young man wrote many poems for the lady of his heart, their romance becoming increasingly obvious to the servants. Alerted by them, Raymond invited the young man to a hunting party and killed him with a knife in the back. He brought back the heart and ordered his cook to cook it, before serving it to his wife. After the meal, which Dame Sermonde described as the best she had ever eaten, Raymond revealed the horrible truth. Desperate both by the death of her lover and the act her husband had made her commit, the young woman rushed out of the castrum and threw herself from the cliffs of Roussillon. Since then, the rocks have taken on a blood-red hue and have never lost that color. A spring is also said to have sprung up at the exact spot of her death.