Arles

 

Sketching from the Amphitheater, looking into Arles with the River Rhone in background

My base in Provence is the relatively small town of Arles on the banks of the Rhone River, where it languidly splits into its branches, creating a broad delta of marshes before emptying into the Mediterranean. The city has a population of 50,000 and is surrounded by a verdant plain of agriculture, as it has been for thousands of years. I find the city has a quiet, gritty quality, relaxed in its vast history of ancient importance, content as an irascible old man that has seen better days.

Arelate became a Roman settlement in the 2nd century BCE but was always secondary to the port of Massalia (modern day Marseilles) to the south. This changed when Arles backed Julius Caesar against Pompey in the civil war and was rewarded with a transfer of power from Massalia and the establishment of the Colonia Iulia Paterna Arelatensium Sextanorum (Ancestral Julian colony of Arles of the soldiers of the Sixth Army). This set up Arles as the regions’ most important city for centuries. This is particularly poignant for me: the hotel where I lived as a student in Rome was built on the ruins of the Theater of Pompey where Julius Caesar was murdered by senators.

The city declined after the fall of the western empire, but did enjoy a resurgent importance through the Middle Ages as a stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago in Compostela. Van Gogh would later find a great deal of inspiration here when Arles had faded into a quaint town in the 1800s. Here is where he cut off his ear.

My favorite meal was here, Le Criquet

Tourists come here during the day to take in the Roman ruins, but are mostly gone by sunset. There is a lack of tacky souvenir shops. The city is still occupied by locals with few hotels, so an evening stroll is mainly among real townfolk, doing their townfolksy things: the boulangeries and patisseries are busy selling breads and sweets to Arletans hurrying home for dinner; bars and cafés are filled with the mainly young having a pastis or some other drink to cut the chill of the evening. Off the main streets are the small passageways and lanes of homes that front right on the road. Low chatter, the laughs of children, televisions and the sounds of the kitchen as dinner is prepared reverberate off the ancient hard walls and you feel intrusive, so you don’t linger out of politeness.

As in interloper in this scene, I can enjoy the verité of local life.