Avignon

Benedict XII, elected in 1334, pulled down the old bishops' palace and raised a fortress-like Old Palace around a cloister, and his successor Clement VI added a New Palace whose great chapel ran fifty-two metres long; the building swallowed much of the papacy's income. In 1348 Clement also bought Avignon itself from Queen Joanna I of Naples, Countess of Provence, so that the popes now owned the city they lived in. The court went back to Rome under Gregory XI in 1377, but the Western Schism soon gave Avignon rival popes of its own, and the last of them, Benedict XIII, held out in the palace under siege by French troops until he fled in 1403.

From then on a legate governed Avignon for the pope, and the city and the surrounding Comtat Venaissin remained a papal island inside France, whose people paid no taxes, owed no military service and gave refuge to French Jews. French troops seized it whenever the Crown quarrelled with Rome, in 1663, 1668 and 1768–1774, and papal rule ended only in 1791, when the inhabitants voted to join France.