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The “meeting” of the two palaces is the best place to compare the respective styles. While the Old Palace resembles a defensive keep, the New Palace has finer stonework. Today the courtyard is the venue for theatrical events during the Avignon Festival (see Avignon Festival).

The papal wealth was stashed beneath the flag-stoned floor of the Lower Treasury Hall. The Upper Treasury Hall was effectively the accounts department.

It was in the vast Salle du Consistoire that the pope, cardinals and dignitaries gathered to consider key issues of the day. On the western wall now hang elegant 14th-century frescoes by Simone Martini.

Just off the Consistory Hall, this decorative gem was created by Matteo Giovanetti, a leading Sienese artist. The now faded frescoes depict the lives of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist with exceptional use of perspective across the walls and arched vault.

It was in the large refectory (tinel ) that the pope entertained on feast days, eating alone on a dais, while cardinals and guests were arranged around the room according to rank. The vaulted wooden ceiling was restored during work carried out in the 1970s and the walls are now hung with 18th-century Gobelin tapestries.

Livelier and more colourful than those in St John’s Chapel, Giovanetti’s frescoes here trace the life of a saint admired by Pope Clement VI. The works use deep blues, greys, browns and golds for an effect both realistic and miraculous.

The pope’s bedroom gives a sense of everyday palace life. The pontiffs slept within blue walls decorated with vine and oak-leaf motifs.

Clement VI let his extravagant tastes run wild in his study. Frescoes cover all four walls, with scenes of hunting and fishing against a forest background – the most unusual decor in the palace.

Of massive proportions, 52 m (170 ft) long, 15 m (50 ft) wide and 20 m (65 ft) high, with seven vaulted bays, the Grande Chapelle was the scene of all kinds of religious celebrations, including papal coronations.

This was the meeting place of the Court of Apostolic causes, the popes’ forbidding judiciary against which no appeal was allowed. The hall’s vaulted ceiling bears a small remaining section of the Prophet’s Fresco – much of the fresco was hacked off and sold by soldiers during the palace’s time as a barracks in the 19th century.