# Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Van Gogh and Glanum — The South of France
> A plane-shaded market town in the Alpilles where Van Gogh painted his last great year and the Romans left a buried city. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in the Bouches-du-Rhône.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/saint-remy-de-provence/*

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By **The Editors** — _Saint-Rémy-de-Provence_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

Saint-Rémy sits at the northern foot of the **Alpilles**, a round old town wrapped in plane-shaded boulevards, with one of the best **Wednesday markets** in Provence. It is the birthplace of **Nostradamus** — but the names that draw most visitors are a Dutch painter and a buried Roman town just south of the walls.

## I. The old town and its market

Inside the ring boulevards, the old town is a knot of lanes, fountains and Renaissance hôtels particuliers, several now small museums and galleries. On Wednesday the whole centre fills with stalls — olives, melons, linen, the produce of the Alpilles — in what is, for many, the model of the Provençal market morning.

“He painted the olive trees and the night sky here, in the last good year of his life.”

From the notebook

![An olive grove below dry hills in golden light](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1499002238440-d264edd596ec?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The olive groves below the Alpilles — Van Gogh’s subject, just outside town.

## II. Van Gogh at Saint-Paul

Just south of town, the monastery of **Saint-Paul-de-Mausole** was the asylum where **Vincent van Gogh** spent a year from 1889, and in it painted with extraordinary force — the irises, the olive trees, the cypresses, and the rolling night that became _The Starry Night_. His room and the walled garden are open; the fields he painted still surround them.

![A Roman triumphal arch and mausoleum among trees](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1566720537031-8b3e498d2881?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

Les Antiques — the Roman arch and mausoleum at the gate of Glanum.

## III. Glanum, the buried city

Beside the monastery stand **Les Antiques** — a triumphal arch and a mausoleum, the best-preserved Roman monuments of their kind in France — and behind them the excavated city of **Glanum**, a Greco-Roman town with its forum, temples and spring laid open in the valley. Few places gather two thousand years and a painter’s eye in so small a walk.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _visit_

Getting there

About 20 min from Avignon by car; **Les Baux** is fifteen minutes south over the hills.

When to go

Wednesday for the market; spring and autumn for the light Van Gogh chased.

Where to stay

**Hôtel de Tourrel**, a restored townhouse in the heart of the old town.

Read next

[Les Baux-de-Provence and the Carrières de Lumières](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/provence/les-baux-de-provence/)

E

About the Author · L’auteur

#### Élise Marchand

Travel Editor — based in Marseille

Élise has been driving the back roads of the Midi for the journal since its first issue. She pays for her own rooms and her own lunches — and only writes about the places she would return to.

[More by Élise Marchand — voir ses articles](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/journal/)

Continue reading · À lire ensuite

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