PROVENCE- ALPILLES, SAINT REMY
Jack
http://i.am/jack_travel and on http://home.mminternet.com/~nowhere_man
This itinerary starts from Cavaillon, taking the D 99 Towards
Saint-Remy. This is the departement des Bouches du Rhone, which you
can see on the car license plates ending by 13. Left of the road we
can see the crenated walls of the Alpilles chain and on the right the
fertile soils, once given to the Roman soldiers as reward for their
heroic deeds. The D 99 is one of these magnificent but also dangerous,
because lined with plane trees, Provence roads you better watch out
and concentrate. As soon we survived the winding road and formula 1
racing French over takers and arrive in SAINT-REMY we are plunged
right away in a village atmosphere with the boulevards surrounded by
sunny terraces. SAINT-REMY is the exact type of the Provencal town,
charming, surrounding the ancient center, filled with small and narrow
streets crushed by the sun. Add to that the view on the Alpilles and
you will understand why the preserved charm of this city generated
such a residential craze and price inflation. Walk along some
beautiful buildings like the hotel Mistral de Mondragon (a museum of
the Alpilles now. it has a magnificent staircase and interior
courtyard. The hotel de Sade houses the archeological collections of
the Glanum excavations.
It's an idea to go and have a drink the busy and popular terrace
"Chez Sylvio" to prepare ourselves to this visit of the village, the
excavations at Glanum and "Les Antiques" like is called a sort of Arc
de Triomphe. The hospice of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole is also to visit the
more Van Gogh stayed there from May 1889 to May 1890.
Saint-Remy is the birthplace of Nostradamus (1503-1566) and lived in
the rue du Barri.
His father was a Jewish doctor converted to Catholicism. He studied
medicine in Montpellier where he was a friend of Rabelais. Outside
that he studied also grammaticism, logics, mathematics, music and
geometry. He traveled a lot, mastered plague epidemics and settled
down in Salon-de-Provence where he wrote his famous "Centuries", full
of double sided prophecies. He died on 2nd of July in 1566, exactly on
the day he had foreseen.
And if you're a Van Gogh fan, you should know that for the100st
birthday of the death of Van Gogh the hotel Estrine was completely
renovated to house a museum, a "Centre d'Art Presence" without the
slightest work of Van Gogh (too expensive). You can look at
audio-visual info about the life of Van Gogh and it houses sometimes
interesting contemporary exhibitions. An excellent initiative of the
Tourist board was the placement of reproduction posters on the places
where the artist painted. But the intense Provence sun has quickly
made an end to the quality of these images.
When Van Gogh arrives in 1889 in the hospice Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, he
will live in fact in a genuine nut house, where mental patients are
cared after since medieval times. In a letter to his brother Theo he
mentions the roaring and loud shouting in the corridors where the
other patients had sometimes their mental attacks. A friend of mine
told me that he heard the same roaring in the eighties, when he rang
at the main entrance and asked if he could see the two rooms where the
painter had lived and worked. After having been closed very long for
the public (it was still a mad-house), they built now two new rooms in
the corner of the main building and open for visitors. If you walk
around the complex on the right you can see a walled vegetable garden
that used to be a cornfield, painted many times by Van Gogh.
Next article will take us to the roman excavations at Glanum.
Bibliography
"La Provence devient francaise", by Roger Duchčne (Fayard, Paris 1986)
"Guide de la Provence mysterieuse" and "Provence Antique"by Jean-Paul
Clebert (Ed.Sand, 1986), "Guide du Routard Provence 1998
(Ed.Hachette), "Provence", by Jacques-Louis Delpal (ed.Natahn Paris
1987), "A guide to Provence", by Michael Jacobs (ed;Viking, London
1988), "The Roman remains of Southern France", by James Bromwich
(Routledge London 1993)
Jack
My Paris,Provence and Cote d'Azur posts are open again at
http: http://i.am/jack_travel WITH pictures and at
http://home.mminternet.com/~nowhere_man
David Gascon
> "Guide de la Provence mysterieuse" and "Provence Antique"by Jean-Paul
> Clebert (Ed.Sand, 1986), "Guide du Routard Provence 1998
> (Ed.Hachette), "Provence", by Jacques-Louis Delpal (ed.Natahn Paris
> 1987), "A guide to Provence", by Michael Jacobs (ed;Viking, London
> 1988), "The Roman remains of Southern France", by James Bromwich
> (Routledge London 1993)
>
> Jack
>
> My Paris,Provence and Cote d'Azur posts are open again at
> http: http://i.am/jack_travel WITH pictures and at
> http://home.mminternet.com/~nowhere_man
There's an room set up like the one Vincent occupied, off a hallway
papered with excerpts from his journal as well as from accounts of the
treatment of the mentally ill through the ages (often barbarous & cruel
in the extreme). The window of the room looks out on a scene reminiscent
of the cornfield. One can learn about the present-day use of art as
therapy in the institution, & the downstairs giftshop offers for sale
works by recent/current patients as well as the predictable Van Gogh
prints & books. A fine bust of Vincent is displayed that was donated
recently by an American artist (whose name escapes me) to replace one
that was stolen a few years ago.
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole was a highlight of my stop in St. Rémy last year.
(With just a little encouragement, I might tell you about the wonderful
chambre d'hôte that was another. {;-) )
Apologies for mangling the header... {:-0