Three days in Aix-en-Provence: a rich little town under plane trees, where Cezanne kept going home

Two nights in the old centre, with the Cours Mirabeau and its fountains, the painter's studio left as he had it, the cathedral cloister and one very good museum.

Copy this itinerary
Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Aix-en-Provence
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Aix is a town people move to rather than pass through. It was the capital of Provence for centuries, it has been rich for most of them, and it looks it: ochre and grey stone town houses with iron balconies, plane trees meeting overhead, and a fountain at the end of almost every street because the Romans came here for the hot springs and the water never stopped.

The pleasure of it is not any single monument. It is the scale. You can cross the old centre in a quarter of an hour, the streets inside it are closed to cars, and the day arranges itself around a market in the morning, a long lunch and an aperitif on the Cours Mirabeau when the light goes gold at about six. Three days is right, and a fourth would be spent doing the same things again, which is not the worst outcome.

Then there is Cezanne, who was born here in 1839, fought with the town most of his life and painted the mountain east of it until the day he died. His studio is preserved on the hill above the centre with his coat still on the hook, and the ridge of Sainte-Victoire is visible from half the streets, which is a strange thing to notice once you have seen the paintings.

Highlights

  • A street of plane trees and fountains, one of them thermal and furred with moss
  • Cezanne's studio on the hill, left as it stood in 1906
  • A Romanesque cloister of carved double columns, entered through a cathedral built over six centuries
  • Market mornings on the Cours Mirabeau: olives, melons, soap, and prices aimed at people who live here
  • Aperitif hour under the plane trees, which the town takes seriously

Where to stay

Aix-en-Provence, two nights

Stay inside the old town if the budget allows, or in the Mazarin quarter just south of the Cours, which is the seventeenth century grid of grand houses and is quieter at night. Everything below starts from either.

Aix is expensive by the standards of the region. It is a university town, a court town and a second-home town at once, and prices reflect the last of those. Marseille, half an hour away, is the corrective, and cheaper by a third for the same dinner.

Day by day

Day 1 in Aix-en-Provence

The Rotonde, the Cours Mirabeau and the courtyards behind it

Arrive and do nothing complicated. The Fontaine de la Rotonde is where the town starts, a huge circular basin of 1860 in the middle of the traffic with three statues on top facing three different directions, and behind it the Cours Mirabeau runs east for four hundred metres under four rows of plane trees.

It was laid out in the 1650s where the ramparts had been, with the town houses of the parliamentary families on the shaded south side and the coffee tables on the sunny one, and it is still divided that way. Walk it slowly. There are three more fountains down the middle, and the mossy lump halfway along is fed by a thermal spring at about 34 degrees, so it steams on a cold morning.

Then turn off into the old town, where the streets are two metres wide and open without warning into squares. Place d'Albertas is the one to find: a small paved courtyard of matched façades built in the 1740s by a family who wanted something worth looking at from their own front door, with a fountain added in the middle later. It is a busker's dream for the acoustics and it is worth an evening drink nearby.

  1. 16:00

    Fontaine de la Rotonde

    Other

    The town's landmark fountain, built in 1860 at the top of the Cours, with three figures on top facing the three roads out of the town. Everything in Aix is described as being so many minutes from it.

  2. 16:45

    Cours Mirabeau

    Landmark

    The main promenade: plane trees, four fountains and a row of cafés on the sunny side. Markets take it over on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings.

  3. 18:30

    Place d’Albertas

    Architecture

    A private square of the 1740s hidden off a lane, all one design, with a fountain in the middle and musicians in it most evenings. Two minutes from the Cours and easy to walk past.

  4. 20:00

    Aperitif and dinner in the old town

    Eat

    The squares north of the Cours fill from seven. Order a pastis if you want to do as the town does, and eat late; the kitchens here work on southern hours.

With more time: The Museum of Old Aix, five minutes north, is a small collection about the town's own past in a seventeenth century house, and free on the first Sunday of the month. The old thermal baths at the top of the town still operate as a spa, which is one way to spend a first evening.

Day 2 in Aix-en-Provence

Cezanne's studio, the cathedral cloister and the Granet

Book the studio for the morning and walk up to it, twenty minutes north of the cathedral on a road now named after him. Cezanne had the house built in 1902 with a north wall of glass, worked in the top room until he collapsed painting outdoors in 1906, and the room has been kept as he left it: the coats, the plaster cupid, the skulls, the green jar and the ginger pot that turn up in canvas after canvas. Nothing in it is a masterpiece and it is the most affecting thing in Aix.

Come back down to the Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur, which is really three churches in a row: a sixth century baptistery with Roman columns holding up its dome, a Romanesque nave, and a Gothic one alongside. Ask about the Burning Bush, a triptych painted for King René in the 1470s that is opened for visitors rather than left on show. The cloister beside it is the reason to come, small, wooden roofed, with carved double columns and almost nobody in it.

Give the afternoon to the Musée Granet, which is much better than a town this size has any right to have: Provençal painting, a serious archaeology room from the Roman town, a group of Cezannes and, in a converted chapel three hundred metres away on the same ticket, a private collection with Picasso, Klee, Braque and a Van Gogh in it.

  1. 09:30

    Atelier Cézanne

    Culture

    The studio he built in 1902 above the town, left as it was at his death, with the objects from the still lifes on the shelves. Timed tickets online, small groups, and the last half hour is the quietest.

  2. 11:30

    Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur

    Religious

    Six centuries of building stitched together, a sixth century baptistery under the dome and a Romanesque cloister off the side. Free, and guided visits run through the morning and again in the afternoon.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch on Place Richelme

    Eat

    The morning food market packs up around one and the square turns into tables. Order the plat du jour and expect it to be better than the price suggests.

  4. 14:30

    Musée Granet

    Culture

    The town's art museum in a former priory: Provençal painting, Roman finds from the old town, Cezannes, and a second site up the street with the modern collection on the same ticket.

With more time: The obvious extra day here is Sainte-Victoire Mountain, the limestone ridge east of the town that Cezanne painted dozens of times. Buses run out to the villages along its foot from the station by the Rotonde, and the climb to the cross on the ridge is about two hours up over bare limestone with no shade and no water, so go early or settle for the view from the Terrain des Peintres above the town.

Day 3 in Aix-en-Provence

A market morning, a mansion and the shuttle out

If it is a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, be out by nine and let the market have the morning. If it is not, Place Richelme still has the food stalls, and the difference is only in scale.

Then the Hôtel de Caumont, two minutes off the Cours, which is a town house of 1715 restored to what it looked like when the family lived in it and now runs exhibitions on the upper floors. The garden and the café in it are the point as much as the pictures: formal box hedges, a fountain, shade, and a room downstairs showing a film about Cezanne on a loop that is better than it sounds.

Walk back to the Cours through the Passage Agard, a dark covered lane cut through what was once a Carmelite monastery, which comes out beside the Palais de Justice and is the shortest and least likely route in the town. The airport shuttle leaves from the Rotonde, five minutes away.

  1. 10:30

    Hotel de Caumont

    Other

    A 1715 mansion put back to its eighteenth century state, with changing exhibitions upstairs, a formal garden and the best café terrace in the centre. Tickets online, and the garden alone is worth the entry in warm weather.

  2. 12:30

    Passage Agard

    Other

    A covered passage carved through an old monastery, linking the Cours Mirabeau to the courts. Thirty seconds long, easy to miss, and full of small shops.

  3. 13:15

    Calissons for the journey

    Note

    The almond and candied melon sweets the town has been turning out since the Middle Ages, sold in tins that survive a suitcase. The confectioners near the Cours will let you taste before you commit.

With more time: With a later departure, the Vasarely Foundation on the western edge is a hexagonal concrete building from the 1970s hung with enormous op art panels by the man who designed it, and it is either the strangest thing in Aix or the best, depending on the visitor.

Before you go

Getting in

The TGV station is out in the country between Aix and Marseille, about a quarter of an hour from town by shuttle bus, and the trains from Paris take a little over three hours. There is also a small station in Aix itself on the local line, which is slower and drops you in the middle of everything.

Marseille airport is twenty minutes away by the same shuttle, which is the reason a lot of people use Aix as the soft landing for a Provence trip. From Marseille itself, the coach from Saint-Charles takes thirty to forty minutes and runs constantly.

Getting around

On foot, entirely. The old town is a rough oval of narrow streets, mostly pedestrian, and nothing in these three days is more than fifteen minutes' walk away except the studio on the hill, which is twenty and uphill.

Small electric shuttle buses loop through the centre for well under a euro if the heat is winning. For Sainte-Victoire or the villages, the bus station is beside the Rotonde and services are frequent enough on weekdays and thin on Sundays.

Markets, which set the timetable

The food market fills Place Richelme every morning of the week, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays a much larger one takes over the Cours Mirabeau and the squares around the Palais de Justice: produce and flowers on one side, clothes, brocante and Provençal cloth on the other. It is over by one.

Buy calissons if you want the local thing, an almond and candied melon sweet under a sheet of icing that the town has been making since the Middle Ages. Olive oil from the mill towns and soap from Marseille fill the rest of the stalls.

Aix does not ask much of a visitor, which is the point of it. The town is small, handsome, shaded and well fed, and the best hours in it are the ones with nothing scheduled: a coffee facing the plane trees, a bag of things from the market, an hour in a cloister with the door shut behind you.

Look east on the way out of town. The ridge on the horizon is the one on all the postcards, and it looks exactly like the paintings, which almost nothing ever does.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is Aix worth three days, or is it a day trip from Marseille?
It works as a day trip and it is better as a base. Three days lets you take a market morning, the studio and the Granet at the pace the town actually runs at, and evenings here are the good part, which a day tripper never sees.
How do I get to Sainte-Victoire without a car?
Buses from the station beside the Rotonde run east to Vauvenargues and Puyloubier at the foot of the ridge, and drop you at the trailheads. Walking to the cross on top takes around two hours up on bare limestone with no water, so it is a summer morning or a spring day, not an afternoon. For the view Cezanne painted rather than the climb, the Terrain des Peintres is twenty minutes' walk above the town.
When should I come?
April to June and September are the months. July brings the opera festival and the prices that go with it, August is hot and half the town shuts, and winter is quiet and clear with the fountains steaming, which is a fair trade if you do not need to sit outside.
Where else can I see Cezanne's Aix?
The family estate south west of the centre, the quarry at Bibemus east of it and the studio above the town are the three places he worked, and the tourist office sells a combined ticket that covers them with a shuttle. Check what is open before you buy it, since the estate has spent years under restoration.
Can I change the plan?
Copy the trip and edit it: add a night for the mountain, swap the last morning for the villages, move the studio to whichever slot you could actually book.