Aix-en-Provence by Maxine Jones
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With Easyjet and British Airways flying direct to Marseille, the centre of Provence is less than two hours away. The airport (reached after a spectacular turn over the Med) is midway between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, in many ways a more appealing short break destination than the larger city.
Dubbed ‘la Provence par excellence’, Aix is a consistently beautiful city of 17th- and 18th-century honey-toned buildings, intriguing narrow streets dotted with fountains and the splendid cours Mirabeau, a wide avenue lined with cafes and plane trees. The leaves filter the strong sunlight into dancing dappled light, through which the elegant people of Aix wander about their business. Sitting watching them from the terrace of the Bastide du Cours, having polished off goats cheese with honey in thyme pastry, provencal lamb in herbs, a delicious crème brule, and half a bottle of local rose, England seemed light years away.
A guided tour of Aix allows you to hear about the city’s connection with Cezanne and Zola. The inseparable school friends fell out when Zola depicted an artist unsympathetically in one of his novels. Aix is gearing up for a major Cezanne celebration in 2006, the centenary of his death, when many of his masterpieces will make their way back for an exhibition from June to September.
Cezanne’s studio is on a hill to the north of the city, set in quiet, leafy gardens. Almost exactly as he left it when he died in 1906, this for me was the highlight of my three-day visit to the area. Scattered around are all the plain, everyday objects - the coffee pots, the wicker baskets, the wine bottles - that take on an almost religious resonance from having appeared in so many of his still life works. The Mont Sainte Victoire was another favourite subject. Cezanne would take his donkey and easel and set himself up to paint its varied landscapes and changing light. There are several signposted routes, from strolling to hiking to rock climbing. Picasso, who acknowledged the influence of Cezanne, used to own the castle here and is buried, standing upright, in its grounds.
In Saint-Remy-de-Provence, west of Aix, the landscape is again surprisingly familiar, this time through having been interpreted so many times by Van Gogh. He stayed here in 1890 at the Saint Paul Hospital, which today remains virtually unchanged, except for the reproductions of his paintings erected on posts alongside the sites that inspired them. The building is now a psychiatric hospital for women, whose paintings are on sale alongside Van Gogh prints.
Adjacent is the Roman site of Glanum, also low-key despite its august connections. The café on the site has taken authenticity one step further by only serving food the Romans would have eaten. This makes for a refreshing culinary experience. No tomatoes or potatoes or pasta but heavy on salads, figs, dates, goats cheese, duck, honey, chickpeas, fennel and olives. The recipes are culled from De Re Coquinaria by Gavius Apicius, written in the first century AD.
Founded by the Celts in 3000 BC, the area now known as Saint Remy was a Greek town around 2600 BC before becoming the Roman town of Glanum. Its importance was assured, being at the intersection of three major Roman roads. The via Domitia and Via Aurelia were parallel roads which joined the Iberian peninsula to Italy.The via Agrippa linked northern Gaul and northern Europe to the Mediterranean basin and Rome. This was where cultures from across the Roman world would meet.
Saint Remy was also the home of Nostradamus, born here in 1503, and a stroll through the quiet village (which nonetheless manages to incorporate dozens of restaurants) brings you to his house.
Les Baux de Provence and Arles are two other worthwhile, and strikingly different, destinations which can easily be fitted into a short break in this part of Provence. Les Baux is hard to distinguish from the rocky crag to which it clings on the southern slopes of the Alpilles Hills. It is easy to imagine people living here from the Neolithic Age, around 6000 BC, and there are remains of Bronze Age dwellings. Near the village, a vast gouged out quarry has been turned into an exhibition space of giant cathedral-like proportions, where projected images and light and sound create a dreamlike effect as you walk through. Cezanne will be the subject of the 2006 installation at the Cathedrale d’Images (www.cathedrale-images.com).
While Baux perches on its rock, looking over fertile, empty valleys, Arles, at the gateway to the Camargue, is the largest ‘commune’ in France, with 50,000 inhabitants. Its territory stretches between the arms of the Rhone as far as the beach, 28 miles from the centre. To get a good feel for the city, head for the Roman arena, hub of colour and activity during the July Fetes d’Arles, and stroll around the streets nearby and along the banks of the Rhone river, at its widest here.
Van Gogh painted more than 250 pictures in Arles between 1888 and 1889. You can stand on the spot along the Rhone which he painted by night, lighted candles around his head, and view the site where he hoped to set up a commune of painters with Gaugin. The peaceful gardens in the hospital where he stayed before being transferred to Saint Remy are dutifully planted with the same flowers he depicted. The Café la Nuit has gone one step further, painting itself yellow to be true to the image Van Gogh created, a case of life imitating art. Van Gogh gave away many paintings to people in Arles but few remain - some were used to mend chicken houses and some as target practice. Van Gogh is now the life blood of Arles, which, no longer the industrial city he knew, relies heavily on the tourist trade.
‘L’art de vivre’ is something of which the people in Provence are connoisseurs. They eat well and look good. The climate and landscape are all you could wish for. That artists such as Cezanne and Van Gogh should have burst into creativity here is no surprise, nor that civilisation should have thrived here for so long. After leaving Provence, grey skies and damp weather seem like an affront to the senses.