Post-impressionist artist Paul Cézanne, born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839, spent most of his sixty-six years in his beloved Aix and he died there in 1906. He grew up there, studied law at the university, took art classes at the city’s Musée Granet—even won a second-place prize for his painting at that museum—and famously painted nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire some five dozen times. Cézanne is generally regarded as the most famous painter to emerge from Aix-en-Provence and is certainly regarded as one of the most significant artists of his time, credited with laying the foundation for 20th-century Cubism and described as “the father of us all” by…

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 “Calissons” is the first of a three-part series that focuses on what you may find in Provence after the “big supper” (otherwise known as the “Gros Souper”) on Christmas Eve,  Called “the thirteen desserts of Christmas” or “Les Treize Desserts de Noël,” tradition dictates that the desserts consist of dried fruit and nuts, fresh fruit, and sweets totaling 13 desserts to represent Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles at the Last Supper. The desserts are set out after Midnight Mass, all at once, on three layers of white table cloths (that represent the Holy Trinity). People who live in Provence know that everyone should take…

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With spring around the corner and warm temperatures to follow, the market in Aix-en-Provence is at the very top of my list of 10 favorite markets. The city’s famous flower market will soon be an irresistible cacophony of color, scent, and variety, a veritable garden in the midst of the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. It is the place to be on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings.   We usually start our market expedition here in the flower market although we always park south of Cours Mirabeau in the Mignet parking lot (so we can stop off at Les Deux Garçons to fortify ourselves with…

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Department stores in the United States ring in the Christmas season the day after Halloween—with the possible exception of those states that mark the Day of the Dead—and the rest of us fall into place when we toss out the turkey carcass at the end of November, depending on where Thanksgiving lands. In Provence, December 4th marks the start of the Christmas season.  It’s a long season—we all know the French like their holidays and I say that in the most commendable even covetous manner.  But, the holiday season does span over eight weeks, ending on February 2 with Candlemas (or Chandeleur)! December 4th—today!—is the…

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Should Woody Allen and Owen Wilson decide to follow Picasso to the South of France, surely Les Deux Garçons would feature prominently. Like Les Deux Magots, the famous café hang-out of Gertrude Stein’s Lost Generation in 1920s, Les Deux Garçons has long been a magnet for artists and writers in Aix-en-Provence. Les Deux Garçons’ roots reach back to 1792, but 53 cours Mirabeau had a long history before it became a café. The 17th century mansion is first mentioned in the historic accounts of Aix (that I read) as being the 1660s home of Francois de Gantès, lawyer in the court of the King Louis…

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  Chapelle St-Sixte As one drives toward Les Alpilles, along the D24 between the tiny villages of Orgon and Eygalières, about 30 minutes from Lourmarin, there’s a very tiny chapel. Framed by lovely cypress trees van Gogh surely would have painted had he ventured a little further from the hospital in St Remy, the 12th century chapel stands atop a stony knoll now dotted with olive and almond trees and an occasional patch of grass. Chapelle St-Sixte was erected on the site of a pagan temple that was built in reverence to a nearby spring. Rituals involving that spring still exist today: a couple must…

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Twenty six years ago today, August 15, 1944, Allied troops landed in Provence to help liberate Europe from the Nazis and end World War II. The Allied invasion of Provence, code-named Operation Dragoon, got overshadowed by the better-known D-Day invasion in Normandy two months before (June 6, 1944). So much so that it got dubbed “The forgotten D-Day.” Yet 66 years later, Provence is strewn with memorials to the Provence landings. And this August 15, at least one community will devote the whole day to remembering the historic military campaign that freed southern France from occupation. Two hours from our rental apartment in Lourmarin, the…

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Perhaps you’d like to escape the sticky heat of Paris this August by traveling to Provence. You can do so in just a little over three hours in the quiet comfort aboard the high-speed train– le Train a Grande Vitesse, or TGV, as the French call it. (Conversely, you can add a quick Paris TGV trip to your Provence agenda….although we don’t recommend doing so in August!) Powered by electric motors, the French TGV was originally conceived in the 1960s right after Japan launched its foray into high-speed trains. Today’s TGV from Paris to Provence runs at about 320 kilometers an hour, and gets there…

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