Activities in and around Aix-en-Provence

Aix-en-Provence

Capital city of Provence, with its superb XVII and XVIII century architecture Aix invites a stroll among its town houses, fountains, intimate squares, churches, and historic.

Avignon

The majestic palace of the City of the Popes, the cathedral, a world-renowned summer theatre festival, and numerous rich museums greet the visitor, all graced in the medley of past and present by the famous "pont d'Avignon", where "on y dansait tous en rond". Stroll through the quaint, narrow streets or enjoy the impressive vistas viewed from the banks of the mighty Rhτne river flows by the city ramparts.

Aix-en-Provence lyrical music festival

Since 1948 Aix is known throughout the world for its international festival of music. In the space of a few short years the city acquired a renown unprecedented in its history of over two millennia. Mozart in an eighteenth century setting and the warm magic of its midsummer’s nights attracted singers and musicians from all over the world, and audiences in whom Provence lay, like a dreamland, rich with eternal beauty, vineyards, fruit blossoms and fruits, the scents of thyme, lavender and rosemary, tables set in the shade of great plane trees, old stones carved and erected long ago, perched villages, blue skies, secluded Cistercian abbeys, and the Mediterranean cradle, where so much began.

Provence traditions

The traditions of Provence are reflected in its spiritual, social, and economic infrastructure. We find them in the home, at the butcher's, baker's, markets, church, in village festivals, crθches, pastorales. And we find them, sometimes deep buried in the collective unconscious of a land too often invaded (and ravaged) by plague, by the Celts, Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Franks, and torn apart by feudal rivalry and wars of religion. The confetti sprinkling that follows in no way covers ground that is as rich and profound as it is wide.