Via Rhodana

At a Glance

• Start / Finish: La Roche-de-Glun (Drôme), meeting point of the feeder routes from Lyon and Gillonnay / Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), starting point of the Via Tolosana
• Length: 239.8 km; from Lyon, together with the Via Rhodana (Lyon), 356.0 km; from Gillonnay via the Via Adresca, about 328 km
• Duration: 12 stages; with a rest day in Avignon or Arles, 13 to 14 days
• Elevation: ↗ 2,941 m / ↘ 3,031 m
• Highest point: 395 m at km 101.7 on the limestone plateau between Saint-Montan and Saint-Marcel-d'Ardèche; lowest point 3 m on the plain before Arles
• Landscape: The Rhône Valley with basalt crags and vineyard terraces, the limestone plateaus of the lower Ardèche, garrigue and wine country in the Gard, and finally flat Provence
• Waymarking: The association's scallop-shell markers, not equally frequent everywhere
• Traces of St. James: Figures of St. James on the portal and in the cloister of Saint-Trophime in Arles; around 1140 the Codex Calixtinus names Arles as one of the four starting points for Santiago
• Accommodation: Donation-based accueils jacquaires, gîtes, chambres d'hôtes, hotels in the towns; no albergues in the Spanish sense
• Connecting routes: Via Rhodana (Lyon) and Via Adresca in La Roche-de-Glun; in Arles the Via Tolosana, Via Domitia and Via Aurelia; in Le Teil the Via Adresca (Montélimar) branches off via Aubenas to Le Puy-en-Velay
• Best time: April to June and September to October; in July and August the Gard gets very hot
• Associations along the way: whole route: Association Rhône-Alpes des Amis de Saint-Jacques

Overview

The Via Rhodana is a river with signposts. In La Roche-de-Glun, an island in the Rhône north of Valence, you cross the current to the right bank and don't leave the valley again until Arles. For twelve days you have the slopes of the Ardèche on your right and the water on your left, with the highway, the railroad and the cooling towers of Cruas beyond. That sounds like country you pass through, and sometimes it is. But every day there's a place on the route that is older than the road beside it: the abbey church of Cruas, the black castle of Rochemaure, the bishop's town of Viviers, the charterhouse of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.

Hardly anyone actually starts in La Roche-de-Glun. Most people arrive already on foot: from Lyon along the river, or from Geneva via the Via Gebennensis and the Via Adresca, with Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye behind them. From Geneva to Arles that's about 498 kilometers, from Lyon 356. And then you're standing in Arles, where for most pilgrims the journey only begins. For them Arles is kilometer zero; for you it's a stage finish, with a backpack full of Rhône.

Other Names

Via Rhodana is Latin for "Rhône Way," after Rhodanus, the Roman name of the river. The name was given by the Association Rhône-Alpes des Amis de Saint-Jacques (ARA, also known as Compostelle en Rhône-Alpes); in its color system the Via Rhodana is the Chemin bleu (blue way) and the Via Adresca the Chemin vert (green way). In French you'll also see Chemin de Saint-Jacques de Lyon à Arles or Chemin de la vallée du Rhône. With the ViaRhôna, the bike route along the same river, the trail shares only the valley and, in places, the asphalt.

Important for finding your way: the association describes the Via Rhodana with two starting points, Gillonnay – Arles and Lyon – Arles. Camino Ninja divides the route differently, namely where the paths actually meet:

• Via Rhodana (Lyon) — the feeder from Lyon along the river via Vienne, Condrieu and Tournon to La Roche-de-Glun
• Via Adresca — the feeder from Gillonnay via Roybon and Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye to La Roche-de-Glun, and from there on through the Vivarais to Le Puy-en-Velay
• Via Rhodana — the shared section from La Roche-de-Glun to Arles, the subject of this page

Who It's Ideal For—and Who It's Not So Ideal For

This route is for you if you're coming from Switzerland, Savoy or Lyon and don't want to go to Le Puy but to the Mediterranean and onto the Via Tolosana. It suits you if you like even days: the highest point is 395 meters, and the only real climbs are between La Voulte and Cruas and on the limestone plateau beyond Saint-Montan. And it suits spring, when the highlands are still cold and every day takes you a bit farther south.

Honestly, though, it's not for you if you're looking for a pilgrim community. On the Via Rhodana you'll meet more ViaRhôna cyclists than people with a shell on their backpack, and there are no albergues in the Spanish sense. It's also not for you if infrastructure bothers you: the Rhône Valley is one of Europe's great transport corridors, with a highway, a national road, a railroad, dams and a nuclear power plant. And if you have to walk in July: in the Gard and before Arles it gets so hot that you either set off at six in the morning or not at all.

Route & Landscape

La Roche-de-Glun to Le Teil (km 0–76.7): From the island you cross the Rhône to Châteaubourg on the right bank. Until just past Châteaubourg, about 6 kilometers, you still share the path with the Via Adresca; then it turns west toward the Vivarais, and you stay by the river. At Guilherand-Granges, Valence lies directly opposite. Beneath the slopes of the Ardèche you continue to Beauchastel and La Voulte-sur-Rhône, then via Rompon into the hills; Saint-Julien-en-Saint-Alban lies about 1 km off the route. In Cruas, abbey church and cooling towers stand side by side; after that you pass beneath the basalt crag of Rochemaure to Le Teil; Meysse stays 1.3 km off to the side.

Le Teil to Arles (km 76.7–239.8): Past Le Teil, Viviers lies 1.4 km off the route, and the detour is worth making. Via the medieval village of Saint-Montan you climb onto the limestone plateau, where the highest point lies at km 101.7, and pass Saint-Marcel-d'Ardèche on the way to the mouth of the Ardèche at Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche. In the Gard things turn southern: garrigue, Côtes du Rhône wine country, Bagnols-sur-Cèze, Laudun-l'Ardoise, Roquemaure. Pujaut stays off to your right, and then you're standing in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, looking across the river at the Papal Palace; Avignon itself lies 1.4 km away on the other bank. Via Les Angles, Aramon and Montfrin you reach Beaucaire, cross over to Tarascon and walk through flat country that ends up just 3 meters above sea level, all the way to Arles.

Stages, Terrain, and Difficulty

The twelve stages are Camino Ninja's suggestion, ending in places with accommodation. Distances come from the Camino Ninja map, calibrated exactly to 239.8 km. The terrain is easy but often hard underfoot: riverside levees, back roads, village asphalt. The two short days are intentional, because Valence and Avignon deserve an afternoon.

1. La Roche-de-Glun → Guilherand-Granges (12.1 km) — across the Rhône to Châteaubourg, where the Via Adresca says goodbye; Valence lies opposite.
2. Guilherand-Granges → La Voulte-sur-Rhône (20.0 km) — beneath the slopes of the Ardèche via Beauchastel.
3. La Voulte-sur-Rhône → Cruas (25.9 km) — via Rompon into the hills, the only day with noticeable ups and downs before the plateau.
4. Cruas → Le Teil (18.7 km) — past the castle of Rochemaure, basalt on one side, the Rhône on the other.
5. Le Teil → Saint-Montan (16.7 km) — with a detour to Viviers, 1.4 km off the route.
6. Saint-Montan → Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche (22.6 km) — over the highest point (395 m) on the limestone plateau; Saint-Marcel-d'Ardèche lies 0.8 km off the route.
7. Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche → Bagnols-sur-Cèze (22.7 km) — via Saint-Julien-de-Peyrolas and Celettes into the Gard.
8. Bagnols-sur-Cèze → Roquemaure (24.9 km) — via Laudun-l'Ardoise and Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres through wine country.
9. Roquemaure → Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (12.0 km) — a short day, leaving you the afternoon for Villeneuve or Avignon.
10. Villeneuve-lès-Avignon → Aramon (21.1 km) — via Les Angles south along the right bank.
11. Aramon → Beaucaire (23.4 km) — via Théziers and Montfrin to the castle on the rock.
12. Beaucaire → Arles (19.7 km) — across the Rhône to Tarascon and through the plain to Saint-Trophime.

If you're fit, you can combine stages 9 and 10 into 33.1 km, or the first two into 32.1 km. If you walk more slowly, split the days in Beauchastel, Rochemaure or Montfrin. On the plateau beyond Saint-Montan there are long stretches with neither a shop nor a fountain; carry enough water.

Papal Land Across the River: You Walk on the King's Side

For three days, between Roquemaure and Tarascon, you walk along a border. Here the Rhône divided two worlds. Under the Treaty of Meaux-Paris in 1229 the right bank passed to the French crown; the left bank belonged to Provence and, from 1309, effectively to the pope, when Clement V moved the Curia to Avignon. Between them stood the Pont Saint-Bénézet: a man named Bénézet is said to have begun building it in 1177, and by 1185 twenty-two arches spanned the river over some 920 meters. Whoever held the bridge held the tolls. In 1292, on behalf of Philip the Fair, the seneschal of Beaucaire negotiated an agreement allowing the king to build a fortress at the western end of the bridge. By 1302 the Tour Philippe-le-Bel was standing. The people of Avignon occupied the tower in protest; in 1308 the two sides came to terms, and the gate was finished.

Then something happened that no border official had planned: the cardinals moved to the king's side. Their palaces went up in Villeneuve, and in the mid-1350s Innocent VI founded the Chartreuse du Val-de-Bénédiction right next to his cardinal's palace, where he lies buried to this day. Clement V, by the way, survived his own move to Avignon by only five years: he died on April 20, 1314, in Roquemaure, on the right bank, on his way home to Gascony. You arrive there on day 8. The bridge didn't make it either: floods kept tearing arches away, it was abandoned in 1669, and today four remain.

Farther south the pattern repeats on a smaller scale. Beaucaire and Tarascon face each other directly with their castles. In 1216 Simon de Montfort suffered one of his heaviest defeats before Beaucaire; that same year Raymond VII of Toulouse, born here in 1197, won back his hometown. The punch line for you: as far as Beaucaire, the Via Rhodana stays resolutely on the royal bank. From Villeneuve onward you see the Papal Palace, but always from across the water, just as the kings wanted to see it.

Highlights Along the Way

• La Roche-de-Glun (km 0.0) — an island in the Rhône since the dam was built; in 1342 its inhabitants received a charter of liberties from the Dauphins.
• Abbey church of Sainte-Marie de Cruas (km 58.0) — the abbey was founded in 804 and the church consecrated in 1095; Romanesque, with a crypt, a 12th-century mosaic and a rare monks' gallery.
• Rochemaure (km 70.6) — the Adhémar family's castle from the 11th and 12th centuries, set on a volcanic neck and built of black basalt and white limestone; below it the suspension bridge, built in 1858 by associates of Marc Seguin.
• Viviers (1.4 km off the route at km 85.4) — the bishop's town that gave the Vivarais its name; the Maison des Chevaliers received its Renaissance façade in 1546, and its builder, Noël Albert, led the Huguenots and was executed in Toulouse on August 30, 1568.
• Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (km 175.6) — the Tour Philippe-le-Bel, Fort Saint-André and the charterhouse; opposite, the Papal Palace and the Pont Saint-Bénézet.
• Beaucaire (km 220.1) — castle with a triangular keep; from the 17th to the 19th century, ten days of the Foire de la Madeleine generated as much trade as the port of Marseille did in a year.
• Arles (km 239.8) — the portal of Saint-Trophime from the late 12th century, the Alyscamps with Saint-Honorat; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981, and since 1998 also as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. Relics of St. Anthony are said to have been deposited in the church of Saint-Julien on January 9, 1490, relics that Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye on the Via Adresca also claims.

Romanesque in the Shadow of the Cooling Towers

No section shows the Rhône Valley more honestly than the one between La Voulte and Le Teil. In Cruas you stand before an abbey church that Urban II consecrated in the very year he called for the Crusade at Clermont: 1095. Raise your eyes and you see the four cooling towers of the Cruas-Meysse nuclear power plant; one of them bears a giant mural of a child with a water jug. Two hours later you're walking beneath the basalt castle of Rochemaure, which grows out of an extinct volcano.

That the earth here hasn't entirely settled down, Le Teil learned on November 11, 2019: at 11:52 a.m. it shook with a magnitude of around 5, one of the strongest earthquakes in France in decades; houses and the church of Mélas were badly damaged. The fault zone lay about 12 kilometers from the power plant. So in a single day you walk through a thousand years of Romanesque, a slice of industry and a young crack in the landscape, all in less than 20 kilometers.

How Pilgrims Find Their Way onto This Path

Almost nobody starts in La Roche-de-Glun. The Via Rhodana is the shared lower course of two feeder routes, both of which arrive on the island:

• Via Rhodana (Lyon) — 116.2 km from Lyon along the river via Vienne, Condrieu and Tournon-sur-Rhône; Lyon → Arles is 356.0 km in total. If you come from Geneva to Lyon on the Via Lugdunum, you can carry straight on here.
• Via Adresca — from Gillonnay on the Via Gebennensis via Roybon and Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye; Gillonnay → Arles is about 328 km, Geneva → Arles via the Gebennensis, Adresca and Via Rhodana about 498 km.

The ARA's own logic counts the Via Rhodana from Gillonnay or from Lyon. At Camino Ninja, the shared section from La Roche-de-Glun is the Via Rhodana; the feeder from Gillonnay belongs to the Via Adresca, the one from Lyon to the Via Rhodana (Lyon). That changes nothing about the route itself, only which page you read it on.

Continue the pilgrimage?

Three routes meet in Arles. The Via Domitia comes from Piacenza over the Col de Montgenèvre, the Via Aurelia from Genoa along the Riviera; both end here. The Via Tolosana, also called the Voie d'Arles, begins here: 786.4 kilometers via Saint-Gilles, Montpellier and Toulouse up to the Col du Somport, where you descend into Spain on the Camino Aragonés and join the Camino Francés in Puente la Reina.

Even the pilgrims' guide in the Codex Calixtinus sends pilgrims on this route first to the tomb of the city's patron saint: in Arles one should visit "le corps du bienheureux Trophime, confesseur" (the body of the blessed Trophimus, confessor), as the French translation of the Latin text from around 1140 puts it. Plan a rest day in Arles before setting out on the Via Tolosana. The others start there from zero; by then you'll already have between 240 and 500 kilometers in your legs.

Preparation & Practical Information

The best times are April to June and September to October. In high summer the Rhône Valley south of Montélimar is hot, and the mistral can blow hard from the north for days on end, which for you mostly means a tailwind. In winter the route is walkable, but many private lodgings are closed.

When it comes to accommodation, the association is your best help. Besides hotels, gîtes and chambres d'hôtes there are the accueils jacquaires: families who host pilgrims for a donation, often with dinner. Their addresses are in the association's guide "Compostelle en Rhône-Alpes" for the Via Rhodana and Via Adresca (2023 edition, bilingual French and German). Plan your days in advance; the easiest way is right in the Camino Ninja App, where you can put together your stages and plan suitable accommodation at the same time.

As on all French routes, you need a pilgrim passport (credencial) to stay in pilgrim accommodation and to receive the Compostela at the end. It's best to order it online in advance so it reaches you in time for the start of your trip. The association was founded in 1993, is based in Lyon and issues the credencial to its members.

What the journey will cost you

With donation-based accueils jacquaires, gîtes and the occasional simple hotel, you'll spend 40 to 60 € per day (Camino Ninja estimate, as of October 2026). For a donation at an accueil jacquaire with dinner and breakfast, 20 to 30 € is a fair range; a gîte bed usually costs 15 to 25 €, a double room in a chambre d'hôtes 55 to 80 € (as of October 2026). For 12 stages that comes to about 500 to 750 €, not counting travel to and from the route. The association's guide costs 17.50 € (as of October 2026).

Getting Here

To the start: La Roche-de-Glun has no train station of its own. The nearest are in Tain-l'Hermitage, about 8 km north, and Valence-Ville, about 10 km south; from there you reach the island by regional bus or taxi. If you're arriving on foot from Lyon or Gillonnay, you don't need transport, just good shoes.

From the finish: Arles station is about a ten-minute walk from the old town, with TER trains to Avignon and Marseille and long-distance trains toward Paris; more frequent TGVs leave from Avignon TGV. You'll find timetables at sncf-connect.com.

• Getting to the start: Train to Valence-Ville or Tain-l'Hermitage–Tournon, then bus or taxi to La Roche-de-Glun
• Joining midway: Valence (opposite Guilherand-Granges), Le Teil and Montélimar (bus), Avignon Centre and Avignon TGV (opposite Villeneuve-lès-Avignon), Tarascon
• Return from the finish: Arles by TER to Avignon and Marseille, long-distance trains from Avignon TGV, Marseille Provence Airport