Let me set the scene.

It was one of those perfect South of France afternoons — warm, golden, the kind of light that makes everything look like a painting that's been left to dry for several centuries. We parked at the bottom of the hill, walked up through the gate in the old stone walls, and stepped into one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life.

And then we discovered that approximately everything was closed.

The gallery: closed. The Fondation Maeght: closed. The little shop I'd heard about with the handmade ceramics: closed. The charming restaurant with the terrace draped in wisteria: closed. It was like the village had decided to take a collective afternoon off and forgotten to tell us.

Ludo, who has the temperament of a man who has never once been genuinely annoyed by anything, suggested we just walk.

I should tell you something about me and walking. I hate it. I am a Canadian who moved to the South of France, not a person who hikes for fun. My idea of acceptable walking distance is from the car to the restaurant. I have strong feelings about this and I stand by them.

Saint-Paul-de-Vence is entirely pedestrianised, entirely cobblestoned, and entirely uphill in at least three directions. It was, in other words, designed specifically to test me.

It was, it turns out, the best possible call.

The walk

Because here is the thing about Saint-Paul-de-Vence that no photograph quite prepares you for: the village itself — just the act of walking through it — is the experience.

The ramparts first. You walk the old stone walls that have been standing since the 16th century, the valley dropping away on both sides, the hills of the arrière-pays rolling out in every direction. The Mediterranean glitters somewhere in the far distance. The stone under your feet is worn smooth by centuries of other feet. It is the kind of place that makes you feel simultaneously very small and very lucky to be alive.

And then the streets. Narrow, cobblestoned, lined with honey-coloured stone houses that lean slightly toward each other as if sharing a secret. Bougainvillea spilling over old walls in shades of magenta and orange. Doorways that have been doorways since before anyone currently alive was born. You don't need a map. You don't need a plan. You just walk and turn and walk and turn and every corner gives you something worth stopping for.

And then there's the church. The Collégiale Saint-Paul, sitting at the heart of the village like it owns the place — which, frankly, it does. Built in the 12th century, all pale stone and quiet authority, with a bell tower that appears in approximately every photograph ever taken of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. If you've seen a picture of this village, you've seen this church. It earns it. Step inside and it's cool and calm and full of the particular silence that very old buildings keep, as if they've absorbed centuries of people coming in to think and haven't let it go. Marc Chagall is buried in the cemetery just outside the village walls, which feels fitting — he spent the last years of his life here, in a place that looked almost exactly like one of his paintings.

I kept reaching for my phone and then putting it back in my pocket. Some things resist being photographed. Saint-Paul-de-Vence is one of them — not because it isn't beautiful, but because the beauty is in the feeling of being there. The particular quality of the silence. The way the light lands on old stone at four in the afternoon. None of that fits in a rectangle.

The famous square

At some point we came out onto the main square — the one where the old men play pétanque in the shade of the plane trees, the one that has been photographed ten thousand times and still looks exactly like itself and nothing like the photographs.

We sat at a café table and ordered something cold and watched the pétanque for a long time. There is something deeply, almost philosophically satisfying about watching pétanque being played well by people who have been playing it for fifty years. The focus. The stillness before the throw. The metallic clank of the boules landing. It requires nothing from you except to sit there and appreciate it.

A man in a linen shirt won three rounds in a row. Nobody seemed surprised. I had the impression this happened most days.

What was actually open

Eventually, a gallery opened. One gallery, small, tucked between two houses on a side street, run by a woman named Isabelle who had the focused energy of someone who opens at exactly the hour she feels like opening and not a minute before.

The paintings were large, abstract, in blues and ochres and deep greens — the kind of work you stare at for a while before realising you've been staring for a while. I didn't buy anything. The prices were what they were. But I spent twenty minutes in there that I'm glad I spent.

Next door was a tiny épicerie that had clearly not been closed at all and was faintly offended by the implication. I bought a jar of tapenade, a small pot of fig jam, and a bar of dark chocolate with fleur de sel. I felt considerably better about the afternoon.

Further along, Dolce Italia — a small gelato parlour on the main street — was very much open and very much worth it. I had pistachio. Ludo had lemon. We stood in the street eating gelato in the afternoon sun like people on a holiday poster and neither of us mentioned the closed galleries even once.

The restaurant I haven't managed to eat at yet

I'd heard about it before we went. Everyone who knows Saint-Paul-de-Vence has heard about it. Opened in 1920, it started as a simple inn and became, over the decades, the unofficial canteen of the modern art world. Picasso came. Matisse came. Chagall, Calder, Braque. They came, they stayed, they ate — and when the bill arrived and they had no money, they paid with paintings. The owner accepted. The walls of the restaurant are now covered in original works worth more than most museums will ever see.

I stood outside it that afternoon. The wisteria over the entrance was in bloom. Through the open door I caught a glimpse of something large and colourful on a wall that I'm almost certain was a Miró. A waiter carried two glasses of something cold across a sun-drenched courtyard.

It was, needless to say, fully booked.

I have a reservation for next time. Make yours before you go — this is not the kind of place you walk into on a whim and find a table. But it is absolutely the kind of place worth planning an entire afternoon around.

The Fondation Maeght — go when it's open

Built in 1964 and set in pine trees just outside the village walls, the Fondation Maeght is one of the finest modern art museums in Europe. A permanent collection that includes Miró, Chagall, Giacometti, Braque, Calder. The building itself, designed by Josep Lluís Sert, is a masterpiece of light and space — artists were involved in the design and it shows in every room.

I did not go inside. It was closed.

Check the opening hours before you leave home. I cannot stress this enough. Learn from my afternoon.

The practical bits

Saint-Paul-de-Vence on a closed afternoon was still one of the most beautiful places I have ever walked through.

I genuinely cannot imagine what it's like when everything is open.

I intend to find out.