Cours Mirabeau
The Cours Mirabeau is a four-hundred-metre avenue of plane trees — each one massive, their branches meeting overhead to create a tunnel of green light in summer — flanked on one side by 17th-century mansions housing banks and on the other by cafés and brasseries whose terraces belong to whoever arrives first. The Café Les Deux Garçons, at number 53, has been the city's intellectual gathering point since 1792. Three fountains run the length of the avenue; the Fontaine de la Rotonde at the western end is the most theatrical. The cours is best in the morning, before the tourist traffic thickens, with a coffee from any terrace and a newspaper.
The Atelier Cézanne
The Atelier Cézanne, on the hill north of the city, is one of the most affecting small museums in France — Cézanne's working studio preserved almost exactly as he left it in 1906, the day before he died. The tools, the still-life objects that appear in his paintings, the unfinished canvases on the easel, and the particular quality of northern light through the high windows clarify something about his work that the paintings alone cannot communicate. The studio is small; visit on a weekday morning with a timed entry ticket. The walk up the hill from the city centre, past the house where he grew up, is worth making slowly.
The Markets of Aix
Aix has three markets a week on Place Richelme — Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday — that are among the finest produce markets in France. The Saturday market is the largest: wild asparagus in spring, truffles in winter, tomatoes of seventeen varieties in August, the lavender honey and dried herbs and olive oil from the surrounding farms that define Provençal cooking at its most direct. The flower market on Place de l'Hôtel de Ville operates on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings and is, purely as a spectacle, worth arriving for on its own terms.
Aix as a Base for Provence
Aix is the most practical base for exploring western Provence. The TGV station (outside the city, connected by shuttle bus) has direct links to Paris in three hours; buses and local trains connect to Marseille in thirty minutes. For the Luberon villages, a car is necessary but Aix is the logical starting point — Gordes is forty-five minutes east, Roussillon an hour, Apt fifty minutes. The old city contains enough good hotels in converted mansions to justify basing a week's Provence exploration here rather than in a rural gîte, particularly for visits that combine food markets and museum visits with landscape.
Updated