My youngest is currently doing her university year abroad in the south of France so I have been lucky enough to have made two visits there in recent weeks. I have been to France many times and it is a country that is difficult not to love. Paris is probably my favourite city in the entire world, I love Brittany and Normandy, the distinctive scenery and coastal towns, and I love the south and south west too – Biarritz, the Pyrenees, Bordeaux, Langeudoc, it’s all wonderful. Provence is an area that I know less well, so it has been a joy to discover a bit more about it on my recent visits.
Aix-en-Provence dates back to Roman times, but had its heyday in the medieval era and much of the architecture of that period remains, including the magnificant Cathedral of Saint Saveur. It is a city of two halves with narrow, angular streets on one side of the Cours Mirabeau and a more orderly grid-like arrangement on the other.
Much of the night-life, bars and restaurants, takes place in the medieval part of the town, while the other side feels more high-brow – here you will find the Centre Caumont, a beautiful art gallery, and the school where the town’s most famous son, Paul Cézanne, was educated.
The Cours Mirabeau itself is a wide and impressive boulevard lined with magnificent plane trees that offer welcome shade from the Mediterranean sun. Aix is known as the city of fountains and there are certainly some beautiful ones and some interesting ones to see, not least the huge Fontaine de la Rotonde at the top of Cours Mirabeau and the 17th century Fontaine Mossue which was apparently once used by washerwomen . Not any more though.
My husband is a committed Francophile and lover of French literature, and recommended The Dancer at the Gai Moulin, a novel by Georges Simenon, one of his Maigret novels, as my reading accompaniment. I fear that the translation I read was not the best as I found it slow and unengaging. I’ve read other novels by Simenon, considered one of France’s best writers, which I enjoyed more, but this translation lacked subtlety and did not bring out the depth of the characters, particularly the famous Inspector Maigret himself, which was unfortunate. You can read my review on my Goodreads page. Émile Zola also spent part of his early life here and attended the same school as Cezanne, the Collège Mignet on Rue Cardinale.
We visited the city of Marseiile while I was there, on a day when there was a substantial protest by students, which has featured much in the international news lately. There was certainly an ‘edge’ to the city on that day and public transport was somewhat disrupted but the protest itself seemed fairly contained. There were a lot of police around. My daughter tells me there have been protests in Aix too, and though noisy and, again, a little disruptive to daily life, they have been peaceful. She has also heard that conditions in some schools are poor (though she felt comparable to her own secondary school in the UK) and young people have some legitimate claims.
Aix is a town with a rich history and a vibrant cultural life. I feel very fortunate that my daughter is spending time there as I will be very happy to be a frequent visitor in the coming months!
