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It is the changing of the season in Ceret. What the locals call “the winter sky” frames the belltower of the town’s medieval church with a dark steely blue. A dusting of snow has added lightness to the nearby peak of Canigou as if to compensate, but down below the October sun still warms your skin and the town’s pastel walls.

Hunkered down amid trees and low-lying hills in the shadows of the Pyrenean peaks that divide France from Spain, Ceret is a Catalan town as much as a French one. Street names come in both languages, and it’s not much further to Barcelona than the nearest French city, Perpignan.

Fitting that a frontier town should also help shape two of the 20th-century’s most striking artistic movements - Fauvism and Cubism. Approaching by road it‘s not hard to see the inspiration. Ceret’s houses and roofs interlock in rectangular planes of orange and yellow against dark triangular peaks. Shutters make tiny contrasting squares of green, blue and pink. I’m not surprised later to find the mayor presiding over this beautiful geometry is a maths professor.

Henri Matisse and Andre Derain came here in 1905, depicting Ceret and the nearby coastal town of Collioure in fierce brushstrokes and vivid colours which saw the duo dubbed “les fauves” - the wild animals. Picasso, meanwhile, was developing Cubism by the time he made his first visit to Ceret in 1911 to paint the town’s squares (literally).

“Every year he came with a new woman,” says the lady at the tourist office, though there is wry amusement rather than censure as they point me towards Pablo’s favourite vantage points such as the balcony of the Grand Café on Boulevard Joffre - still a good spot to gaze at the world.

Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris, Marc Chagall - all joined Ceret’s artistic A-list in the following decades. But it was a B-lister, Andre Masson, who turned the town’s former jail into an illustrious art gallery in 1950. Picasso donated 53 pieces to the museum in its first six years, including 28 ceramic bowls depicting the bloody style of the corrida which still takes place each summer in Ceret’s bullring. A giant black stone panel by the Catalan master Antoni Tapies frames the entrance.

Despite its art history pedigree, Ceret exudes the air of a town so relaxed it does without traffic lights or parking restrictions. Exhibitions are often endearingly casual - al fresco displays on the old town ramparts at Patio Pierre Mau on Boulevard La Fayette, open shows in a former hospital chapel (The Capelleta) on Rue Rameill, sketches and monochromes overlooking the drinkers in Bar Pablo on Place Picasso (site of the town’s Saturday market). Contemporary stars such as Patrick Cordeau and Julien Garcia, meanwhile, decorate Odile Oms’ 14th-century gallery-cum-home on Rue du Commerce, where the day‘s laundry shares hanging space above a tiny sculpture-filled courtyard.

When I ask the way to my hotel a couple of locals laugh and tell me it’s the cheapest place in town. Am I crazy? Non. Owned by one of Ceret’s leading artists, Marc Fourquet, the Hotel Vidal drips character like a set from a vintage French movie. I half expect Jean-Paul Belmondo to appear at Reception.

The Vidal’s painting-filled dining room - the Restaurant del Bisbe (Bishop’s Restaurant) - also serves a Catalan menu rivalled only by the grander Les Feuillants on Boulevard La Fayette. Squid comes sautéed beautifully with Iberian ham set off with a couple of fat pink langoustine, duck is sauced perfectly with the famous local cherries that are celebrated with a festival each May.

After dinner, I walk in the cool night air. Ceret is sleepy, relaxing after the summer rush of visitors. Instead of tourist chatter, the north wind, the Tramontane, makes ocean sounds with the leaves of the plane trees. In a late night bar, a handful of youngsters shoot the breeze about the summer just gone.

Daylight reveals a maze of streets, many named after Ceret’s artistic coterie such as the turbulent Chaim Soutine who once burned his entire studio of work in a fit of dissatisfaction. Cobbled lanes twist around landmarks like the church of St Pierre or the Place des Neuf Jets, whose 14th-century fountain has the Lion of Castile looking towards Spain above the cockerel of France. In the 17th-century, nationalists broke the lion’s head and turned it towards France but when a drunk dislodged the head again a few years ago, the townsfolk turned it back.

Other streets peter out into hillside trails. At the end of Rue Pere Guisset, you can climb to the old stone house where artist Pierre Brune held court in the 1920s. The wonderfully-named Rue des Evades (Street of the Escapees), meanwhile, was the fastest route to head for the hills and Spain when times were rougher - though the medieval walls that once protected Ceret are now reduced to just two grand arches, the Porte de France and the Porte d’Espagne.

Picasso lived for two years at No.3 Rue des Evades, painting the view towards Canigou as well as the Sardana, the serene Catalan dance performed in Ceret’s squares during the summer heat, when locals link hands in huge circles to perform beneath the giant plane trees. “There are only three steps really so no-one is ever refused who wants to join the circle,” says Pascale Sola, as she advises me on what to buy in her husband’s wine shop.

I ask about the boldly striped local cloth I’ve seen on tables around the town. “They are the colours of the bullfight,“ she explains. Pink and yellow for the cape using during the fight, red for the final act - “pour le mort,” says Pascale.

My final view of the town is from the Pont Du Diable (The Devil’s Bridge). Built in the 14th-century, no-one could understand how its makers had managed to span the Tech river far below so elegantly, and decided that dark powers were the only answer. But the only magic at work in Ceret is benign - light, shape, colour. Inspirational.

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