The Alpilles are a small range with a long memory — Greek and Roman at Glanum, medieval at Les Baux, and forever marked by the year Van Gogh spent painting the olive groves from his asylum window. Two days is enough to walk all three, if you keep to the villages and let the limestone do the rest.
I. Day one — Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
Start at Glanum, the antique town at the foot of the hills, then the cloister of Saint-Paul de Mausole where Van Gogh painted the irises and the olive trees. Keep the afternoon for the old town — the plane-shaded squares, the Wednesday market, a terrace before the light goes.
“The olive groves here are the colour Van Gogh said they were — silver, then green, then nothing you can name.”
II. Day two — Les Baux-de-Provence
Climb to the citadel of Les Baux early, before the lanes fill, then descend to the Carrières de Lumières — a vast disused quarry where paintings are projected across the stone walls. Lunch in the valley among the olive mills, and leave by the back road through the Val d’Enfer.
