St Remy De Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône)

St Remy De Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) mini guide

St-Rémy-de-Provence is famed for its colourful Wednesday morning market, which occupies every corner of the old town centre's winding streets, as well as being the birth place of Nostradamus and the home of van Gogh who stayed in the St-Paul-de-Mausole asylum for the highly productive, penultimate year of his turbulent life.

Away from Wednesday mornings, the town is quieter.  It has for the last quarter of the decade been the favourite haunt of the rich and famous seeking anonymity and the chance to escape the glitz of the Côte d'Azur and find something closer to the real Provence.  Hence St-Rémy and its surrounding villages are well provided for with a variety of bars, restaurants, galleries and shops.

St-Rémy sits at the base of the Alpilles range of hills.  As you enter the Alpilles, just to the South of the town centre, you pass the van Gogh's asylum as well as the extensive remains of the Greco-Roman town of Glanum, both of which are open to the public.

St-Rémy is also the home of several annual festivals beginning with The Transhumance at the end of Spring, when the sheep that spend the mild winters in the region are herded together to be driven to the cooler mountains for the summer.  The local "fêtes votives" at several points during the summer see bulls running in the street (not as dangerous as it sounds), 100 hundred white Camargue horses paraded at night, decorated carriages pulled by up to 100 horses in a line, and the townsfolk dressed in traditional 'Arlesian' costume.