Orange, Vaucluse

Orange is a commune in the Vaucluse department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France, about 21 km north of Avignon on the departmental border with Gard, which follows the Rhône. It has 29,706 residents counted for 2023 and ranks among the largest communes of Vaucluse after Avignon and Carpentras. A Celtic settlement named for a sacred spring stood here before veterans of the second legion founded the Roman colony of Arausio in 35 BC, and the town is renowned for its Roman theatre and triumphal arch, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1981. Orange became a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, passed to William the Silent in 1544 and so into the House of Orange-Nassau, and was finally ceded to France in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht. The name was originally unrelated to the fruit.