Aix was a spa town for the Romans and a parliament town for the kings, and it still moves at the pace of both — slow, civilised, shaded. The plane trees of the Cours Mirabeau close overhead, the fountains run warm with the old thermal water, and the whole city seems built for the hour before dinner.
I. The Cours and the old town
The Cours Mirabeau is the spine — cafés on the sunny side, grand hôtels particuliers on the shade, a fountain at each end and the mossy Fontaine d’Eau Chaude in the middle. Behind it the old town is a tangle of squares and markets; on the other side the quartier Mazarin lays out its seventeenth-century calm around the Fontaine des Quatre-Dauphins.
“A city of a thousand fountains, and not one of them in a hurry.”
II. Cézanne and the mountain
Aix is Paul Cézanne’s city. His studio, the Atelier des Lauves, is kept as he left it on the hill above town; from the Terrain des Peintres nearby you see what he saw — the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the limestone ridge he painted again and again until it stopped being a mountain and became the beginning of modern art.
III. Markets, museums and the table
The markets fill the squares most mornings — flowers on the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, produce and brocante on the Place des Prêcheurs. The Musée Granet holds the city’s art, Cézanne included; and the calisson, the almond-and-melon sweet, has been made here for centuries. Aix is also the easiest base for the Sainte-Victoire and the country around it.
