Welcome in AIX en Provence      
                   
Town of water, town of art, in the imaginary of each one the city was always built and develops around this double identity. But Aix is also a city which can combine the eras and the cultures. Opened on the world, it is a city with human dimensions where cohabit in perfect harmony a preserved inheritance and the town of tomorrow. Here, all is colors and feelings : light of the sky, hones gilded frontages, green transparency of the fountains, shade of the plane trees, surprised nights of festivals...
From its date of construction, 122 before J.C, Aix-en-Provence presents a plentiful inheritance that the movements of the history did not deteriorate and who harmonizes himself sublimely in the lights and the patina of time. The city indeed offers 36 vestiges and monuments, 160 private mansions and 9 museums and foundations.
The town of Aix-en-Provence radiates around its splendid Saint-Sauveur cathedral and deploys, through its places and beautiful residences, the charms of a baroque capital. City of refinement by the neat architecture of its private mansions and the ordinance of its town planning, town of water decorated with a hundred fountains, city of the student's dawdling, Aix-en-Provence is also a town of art, ground of election of many artists. Born in Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne will make city and of its surroundings its principal subject of inspiration. The Sainte-Victoire mountain owes him her world fame.
 
   
Sainte-Victoire mountain
Built from 1946 to 1956 per Joseph Stone, a 87,50 meters height, the dam Bimont feeds out of water the Country of Aix and the town of Aix-en-Provence. The photograph below represents it "against stopping" located downstream and which is used at the beginning of the branch of Marseille-North.     Castle of Vauvenargues  
Cultural circuits
Thermes Sextius build on the Roman thermal baths.
Festival of lyric art.
Festival of the nights of summer of June 28 at July 29.
Many museums to be visited:

  • Granet Museum

    • One of richest of province with major works of the French paintings of XVI in XX century and various dutch, flemish and italian schools. Since 1984, the museum has in deposit eight paintings of Cézanne. The rooms of archaeology make it possible to discover the origins of Aix and civilization celto-Ligurian of Entremont. Year of creation: 1838. In total restoration until June 2006...
  • Museum of old Aix
    Presented at the public in a splendid private mansion of the XVIIe century, superb collections gather multiple objects evoking the traditions of Aix and its soil.
  • Museum of the Tapestries
    Installed in the apartments of pageantry of the Palace of old
    • Archbishop's palace, it makes it possible to discover a rich collection of tapestries of XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries, among which the series known as of "Grotesque", theatrical decoration woven in Beauvais about 1689, and the single specimen in the world of "the history of Don Quichotte" (1735).
  • Vendôme house.

    • Installed in one of most tempting " Madnesses" inherited the Great Century, the Vendôme House remains a place of peace and beauty in which the pageantry and the art of living are reflected last centuries. It shelters pieces of furniture, paintings, art articles of the end of XVIIe and beginning of the XVIIIe centuries and portraits which evoke the memory of personalities to which it was used as residence.
  • Cézanne workshop.
    •  
    More than one museum, the Workshop of Lauves is a true place of memory created in 1954, marked print of Cézanne. It makes it possible to discover the familiar objects of the painter, his artistic preferences. The workshop is equipped with an audio-visual room projecting films and CD roms.
  • Museum of natural History.
    •  
    Founded in 1838, the natural history museum, installed in the very beautiful Hotel Boyer of Eguilles, has a collection unique in France of dinosaurs fossils coming from the surroundings of the Ste. Victoire mountain. This collection is supplemented by a whole of fish, insects and plants fossil.
  • Vasarely Foundation.
    •  
    Contemporary French artist, Victor Vasarely created the foundation in 1976 to promote the integration of art in architecture. Its most known work is presented in the form of monumental works making it possible to the visitor to appreciate the exceptional result to which Vasarely brings geometrical abstract painting under the name of Kinetism. Temporary exposures of scale are organized throughout the year.
  • Quoted of the book
    Place where all the forms of artistic expression cross, it was built around the very rich patrimonial funds of the Méjanes library (the marquis of Méjanes bequeathed by will in 1786 a collection of 80 000 volumes). The City of the Book shelters in its 10.000 square meters of rooms all the aspects of the cultural and artistic life.

    Gastronomy and soil - Regional products
    Calissons to be tasted without moderation.

    • Return