Marseille harbour photo

This photo of Marseille harbour is very beautiful despite having little colour, and a background view that is hard to see clearly. The Marseille it portrays is not especially realistic – very few of the ships in Marseille harbour are decked with rigging – but that hardly matters.

The question is, would it make you want to go to Marseille if you saw the picture in a travel brochure (I bought the picture for use in a travel website) – and would you be disappointed when confronted with the reality?

Toulouse, an unmissable treat

One of my favourite cities in the south of France is Toulouse. The city centre is small enough and calm enough to be manageable, but big enough to always have something new to discover.

It always seems to be a modern active city, while keeping one eye carefully on the past and the important architectural heritage it contains.

Many of the buildings in Toulouse are constructed from the local bricks – small red bricks, left ‘on show’ (ie not covered over with mortar). Very attractive it is too, and distinctive to Toulouse and a few other towns in the region.

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Matisse Chapel at Vence

The south of France – especially the south-east of France – attracted many artists during the decades between 1890 and 1960, several of whom later became household names with paintings and artworks valued at millions of dollars. This we all know.

In a village a few kilometres inland from Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French riviera is a great work of art that will never be sold and is impossible to value – the Matisse chapel at Vence. Matisse himself is said to have claimed it was his greatest work.

Built after world war 2 between 1949 and 1951 it was Matisse who designed every aspect of the chapel after the suggestion of Sister Jacques-Marie (who had worked for Matisse before entering the convent). It is useful to remember that Matisse was 77 years old when he started on the project – most artists create their greatest works when they are rather younger!

Vence chapel is a small, understated building, although the tall cross on the roof gives a clue that it is something out of the ordinary – in particular the crescent moons that decorate it. Not entirely conventional for a church cross.

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La Grande-Motte

I’m not always a big enthusiast for the beaches of Languedoc-Roussillon. Most of the Languedoc resorts arose in the 1960s and 1970s when the mosquitoes were cleared away from the region to make way for tourists under the so-called ‘Mission Racine’. A fair number of them are dated, crowded, have too much building and development and little of historical interest.

The beaches are often long and sandy…and very windswept and lacking for shade.

So my expectations when I visited La Grande-Motte were, to say the least, not high. But this is a resort with a difference.

Found at the eastern end of the Languedoc coast (shortly before it transforms into Provence), La Grande-Motte was designed by an architect called Jean Balladur who based his designs on early Colombian pyramids. Whatever the inspiration, the buildings are starkly 1970’s in appearance – but in a stylish and interesting way, if you are discouraged by the words ‘1970’s architecture’!

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Nimes or Arles – which to visit

I recently had the opportunity to explore the Camargue region of south-western Provence and two important towns that fall just outside its eastern boundary – Nimes and Arles.

If you look up these two towns in your guidebook you wil be struck by the similarities. Both are broadly the same size, both have attractive old centres, and – most curiously – each contains a Roman amphitheatre and other roman ruins. I say ‘curiously’ because there are very few amphitheatres still standing so it seems remarkable that two of the best should be in such close proximity.

So why bother to visit both Nimes and Arles? Surely if you have seen one you have seen enough and should rush back to the beach?

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Keep looking up

Photo taken in Aigues-Mortes centre

In many of the towns you visit in the south of France you will find yourself in open squares lined with trees and narrow streets of medieval houses, and very pretty they are too. The distractions at ground level will keep you occupied, and it is easy to forget to spend a moment to look above you.

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