Travelling Provence France

Aix-en-Provence Travel

Aix-en-Provence is the city of art, and a city of light and activity. Aix is also a home of art schools and several universities, including some American, attracting a youthful population that sparks the atmosphere. Aix is also ancient: a Celtic-Ligurian capital from the 3rd century BC was pushed aside for the founding of Aix in 122 BC, as Aquae Sextiae. For pronunciation, you pronounce the “x”, so Aix sounds like aches, as in aches and pains. On road signs, the name is shortened into Aix-en-Pce.

The center of Aix is the old town (vieille ville), ringed by a circle of boulevards and squares. It’s a small-enough area to explore by foot, but there’s way too much to see in one or two days. The medieval Aix was protected by a wall with 39 towers. Today only the 14th century “Tourreluquo” tower remains, at the northwest corner of the town.

Cours Mirabeau is the center of the center, and the heart of Aix. The Cours Mirabeau is a beautiful tree-lined avenue, with one side lined with wonderful terrace cafés and bookshops. If you sit at only one French sidewalk café outside of Paris, it should be here, where the air is warm, the light sublime and the sidewalk alive. Large plane trees overhang the length of the avenue, giving day-long shade on hot summer days. Some of the more famous cafés are: Le Grillon , Les Deux Garçons, La Belle Epoque and Le Café du Cours.

For breakfast in Aix, we buy spinach quiches and mushroom quiches at a shop low on the Cours Mirabeau, across from the cafés, and have them with our “grandes crèmes” at Les Deux Garcons.

What’s happening in Aix this week?
• The “Semaine des Spectacles” is a weekly guide available from newsstands. It comes out every Wednesday, and contains everything that’s going on in the towns of Provence and the Côte d’Azur (including Aix, Cannes, Nice). It lists restaurants, nightclubs, movies (many in “Version Originale”), museums, and other diversions.
• “La Semaine” is a weekly guide for Aix, available free from the Office de Tourisme. In addition to the movies, theaters and concerts for Aix, it has a calendar of expositions for most of the Beyond region.
Vieille Ville

The old town of Aix is packed with shops, markets, museums, religious and architectural sites and historical sites. The terrace cafés on the Place des Précheurs (by the flower market) attract many of the younger locals, with lower prices than those on the Cours Mirabeau.

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