A weekend in Aix-en-Provence

We had first-class seats on the upper deck of the TGV from Gare de Lyon and shared the carriage with a very handsome Rottweiler wearing a crimson bandanna for his first-class trip! Arrived at Aix TGV station and connected with a bus to Aix-en-Provence. Found the hotel easily, unpacked and then collected a map and info from the office de tourisme.

This weekend in Aix, as well as in Paris, was Journees du Patrimoine when many city-owned buildings and musees are open to the public. The entry queues in Paris apparently can be up to a couple of hours wait; it wasn't so in a smaller town like Aix and it meant we could visit places that we would not otherwise have had access to.

Much of our time we spent wandering the maze of narrow stone streets. The apartment buildings that line the streets are painted in faded hues of yellow and orange with blue or white shuttered windows - the colours reminded us of Florence.

We visited the beautiful Pavillon de Vendome, a small chateau originally built in 1665 for the Duke of Vendome as a hiding place for his love affair with Lucrece de Forbin Sollies, also known as La Belle du Canet. Not exactly inconspicuous, I would have thought - but oh, the romance of the gesture!

Saturday morning was market day in Place des Precheurs, and what fun! We listened and watched as the locals shopped and laughed, and a small terrier spent his entire morning waiting longingly at the back of a butcher's van.

The Musee des Tapisseries, located in what was the palatial residence of the archbishops of Aix in the Place de l'Archeveche, houses a collection of story-telling tapestries from the 17th and 18th centuries and was also showing a collection of contemporary works by painter and sculptor Louis Cane which were linked in theme to the musee building and the tapestries.

We visited Musee Granet, which was showing an interesting exhibition of contemporary works by Pierre Alechinsky and has a permanent collection of works by artists such as Cezanne, Rembrandt and Provencal artist Granet. The musee is situated in the former Priory of Knights of Malta and has been remodelled into a wonderful gallery. The tiny entrance, next to the church of Saint Jean of Malta, is unassuming and opens into a spacious, wonderfully atmospheric gallery centred around a courtyard.

Aix-en-Provence was home to the artist Paul Cezanne and you can follow walks through the city "In the steps of Cezanne". We visited l'Atelier de Cezanne - superb! This was Cezanne's cottage studio and is perched atop a hill just outside of Aix. The second floor of the cottage has three shuttered windows to the front and, opposite, a complete wall of large-paned glass. The garden is now well established and quite wild, but in Cezanne's lifetime the greenery reached no higher than the ground floor and I imagine that the light and the silence of the studio would have been inspirational. The story tells that Cezanne would, every day without fail, leave his apartment in Aix to work in his studio from 6 am until 10.30 am, then home for his meal and return to the studio straight afterwards to work until 5 pm. He kept little else in the studio other than his painting materials and objects that were dear to him and which he used in his last still-life paintings. The studio today feels as if he could return at any moment; a very special place.

One night we had dinner at a cafe in a slightly edgy square in Aix surrounded by an eclectic mix of eating and drinking spots (from crepe cafe to Original English Pub - you can decide the good and the bad!). Suddenly the shutters of an upstairs apartment on the square were thrown open and a young woman leaned out and theatrically read a short piece of prose (in French, of course), at the end of which the listeners in the square burst into applause with cries of "encore", but she closed the shutters and we didn't see her again. For just a moment we lived the artistic air of a past Aix-en-Provence.

The trip back to Paris went smoothly, one stop on the metro from Gare de Lyon to Bastille, a stop at the boulangerie for a baguette and then "home" to our gorgeous courtyard and apartment. Ahhhh, Paris, it's good to be back!