In our June issue, we explore Arles…
Arles is 80 kilometers – and 80 light-years — from Aix-en-Provence. These two irresistible towns incarnate the polar opposites of Provence. Aix has an opera festival. Arles has bullfights. Aix is about Cézanne sipping tea in cafés. Arles is about Van Gogh going mad. When you come down to it, Aix is sweet… and Arles is sexy.
Arles, population 52,000, pulls more than its weight of UNESCO sites in Southern France. Its townscape was shaped in the Gallo-Roman era, when Caesar awarded the town on the via domitia road from Italy to Spain to veterans of his Sixth Legion. There’s an arcaded Roman Arena built to seat 20,000 spectators, the antique theatre that seated 12,000, and the Baths of Constantine. One of the most exciting things about Arles is that its fascinating archaeology is an ongoing project. In 2007, divers pulled a rare and exceedingly life-like bust of Julius Caesar out of the Rhône. Thousands of objects have been recovered already but given the difficult conditions – as divers are hindered by the extremely low visibility in the muddy and polluted river – it’s safe to say that many more works of art are waiting to be rescued.
While some historians posit that the entire riverbank may have been lined with statues, the new finds have already corrected some previous assumptions. The Right Bank of the Rhône, once considered undeveloped, was a thriving, monument-filled part of the city in the Roman era. The strikingly modern and well-appointed Musée départementale Arles antique (closed Tuesday; www.arles-antique.cg13.fr) has easy-to-understand scale models of the Trinquetaille settlements, abandoned due to barbarian raids in the Middle Ages, which are yet to reveal all their secrets.
Arles owns treasures from the Christian era too: the magnificent sculptures in the Saint-Trophîme Cloister; the Priory of the Knights of Malta, now the Musée Réattu housing Old Master and modern art; and the folkloric Museon Arlaten (created by poet Frédéric Mistral) in the 16th century
Laval-Castellane mansion. Les Alyscamps, used as a cemetery from Roman to medieval times, is also a popular tourist attraction.
There aren’t any more gladiators and Christian vs Lion matches in the Arles arena, but they still are used for sport. Courses camarguaises – a non-violent Provençal institution in which contestants attempt to hang ribbons and pop-poms on the horns of the bulls — take place every Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 pm during July and August. (Championships are scheduled for July 2, 4, 6, 13 and 20; Final on October 9).
Despite a growing movement to ban corridas in France, classic bull-fighting is still practiced in Arles and the next big event is the Feria du Riz from September 8th to 11th. Ticket information for all events in the arena is available at www.arenes-arles.com
Next month, photographers from all over the world flock to Arles for the inauguration of the city-wide Rencontres d’Arles Photo Festival on July 4th with 60 exhibits scheduled through September 18th. The formally informal HQ for photographers and journalists is the perennially cool Hôtel Nord Pinus (right next door to Van Gogh’s night café) but recent additions to the Arles landscape – Hotel Particulier and Jean-Luc Rabenal — keep the city scene as hot as ever.
Getting There:
Arles is 700 kilometers from Paris. In general, the fastest train route is a TGV from Paris’s Gare de Lyon to Avignon with a change for Arles (3 ½ to 4 hours) although there are additional connections through Nimes and Marseilles.
photo G. Vlassis