AIX-EN-PROVENCE TO AVIGNON, 65¼ MILES
(105 KILOMETRES)
DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE
Kil. Miles.
=Aix-en-Provence= to Lambesc =21= 13
=Lambesc= to Le Pont Royal =11= 6¾
=Le Pont Royal= to Orgon =16= 10
[=Orgon= to Avignon =28= 17½]
=Orgon= to St. Rémy =19= 11¾
=St. Rémy= to Tarascon =15= 9½
=Tarascon= to Avignon =23= 14¼
NOTES FOR DRIVERS
There is a long ascent out of =Aix=, and a steep-sided ridge is
crossed between =Lambesc= and =Le Pont Royal=; otherwise this section
is level.
PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE
=St. Cannat.=--Small village, with slight ruins of castle.
=Lambesc.=--A small town, much destroyed by the earthquake of 1909.
=Orgon.=--Picturesque little walled town, containing several old
houses and a fourteenth-century church; on the cliff immediately
above are the ruins of a château and a chapel.
=St. Rémy.=--A pleasant town; 1 mile south, Roman triumphal arch and
a splendidly preserved Roman mausoleum.
=Tarascon.=--Picturesque little town by the Rhone; Gothic church,
with fine Romanesque south portal; gateway of town ramparts;
château of King Réné, fifteenth century.
=Beaucaire.=--A depressing little town, facing Tarascon across the
Rhone; fine castle of Montmorency on Roman site.
From Aix to Avignon direct is less than 50 miles, but the longer route
through St. Rémy and Tarascon is well worth the extra 18 miles.
The first village is St. Cannat, where the remains of a castle of the
Bishops of Marseilles can be seen, and also the pilgrimage chapel of
Notre Dame de la Vie. The road then begins to go through an open
country, broken up with a curious formation of rocky ridges, through
which the road has been cut. The whole neighbourhood was badly shaken
with an earthquake in 1909, and Lambesc and other villages suffered very
severely.
Sénas is a small stone village without interest, but Orgon, the next
place, is strikingly situated between a precipitous limestone ridge and
the wide bed of the River Durance, spanned at this point with a huge
lattice girder railway-bridge. On the summit of the ridge are the
picturesque ruins of a château of the Counts of Provence, twice
dismantled, and also the Chapel of Notre Dame de Beauregard. The town
has preserved part of its ramparts and several picturesque houses of the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The church dates from
1325.
Five kilometres north of Orgon the road to St. Rémy goes off to the
left, and runs along the north side of the isolated group of hills
called Les Alpines. Long rows of tall cypresses stand by the roadside in
vast perspectives, and help to mitigate the fierce mistral when it comes
shrieking over the desolate plains of the Rhone’s delta.
ST. RÉMY
is a pleasant town with tree-lined streets and a fourteenth-century
tower to its church, which is modern. About a mile to the south, on the
site of the Phœnician town of _Glanum Livii,_ afterwards Romanized,
stand two remarkably fine relics of the first four centuries of this
era. One is a Roman triumphal arch, half destroyed above, but still
retaining finely coffered work inside the arch and some sculptured
figures outside; the other is a magnificently preserved mausoleum of
three stories, 50 feet high, and built of the same orange-coloured
sandstone as the arch. The base is adorned with bas-reliefs of battle
and hunting scenes, and on the top is a peristyle of ten Corinthian
columns, containing two statues (with modern heads) representing the
parents of Sextus and Marius, of the family of the Julii, by whom it was
erected. The situation of these remarkable structures on a rocky little
plateau is most striking.
TARASCON
Keeping along the foot of Les Alpines for about 9 kilometres farther,
one swings to the right to the interesting old town of Tarascon, which
faces Beaucaire on the opposite side of the mud-coloured Rhone. A long
suspension bridge joins the two towns.
The Church of Ste. Marthe, with its crocketed spire, was built on the
site of a Roman temple in the twelfth century, and rebuilt between 1379
and 1449. It retains the magnificent south portal of the earlier church.
The saint to whom the church is dedicated is said to have been buried
under the marble effigy one may see. A legend tells how St. Martha found
the district ravaged by a hideous dragon, which she killed or tamed, and
thus earned the gratitude of the people of Tarascon. The memory of this
deliverance was kept alive until recent years by a fête held on the
second Sunday after Pentecost, when a huge representation of the dragon
was taken through the streets. The castle of Tarascon is a complete and
most imposing pile, standing four square, with one side washed by the
Rhone. It was begun by Louis II. of Provence in the fourteenth century,
and finished by the good King Réné of Anjou. Being now used as a prison,
it is not easy to obtain permission to enter. The town still preserves a
good gateway, flanked by round towers, and some of the old streets are
picturesquely arcaded.
Beaucaire is a rather squalid little town, and it is far better to look
from the Tarascon side at the fine ruined castle of Montmorency standing
on its mass of white rock.
The road to Avignon goes through a baked and dusty country, with arid,
bleached hills and endless groves of cypresses.
[Illustration: AN ARCHED STREET IN APRICALE, NEAR DOLCEACQUA.
A good example of the rock villages of the Italian Riviera.]