Day 59: Arles

April 17, 2025

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With the really fun walk through the market yesterday and then our walk around the arena and through town, we had pretty well "done" Arles by the end of the day, at least at the superficial level that is our standard. But we like Arles so well that we had scheduled a second day, for even more of a walk around.

For this we used GPSMyCity, which has a "City Introduction Walk" and a "Vincent van Gogh" walk. The intro shows 12 sights and the van Gogh, 6. So off we went.

Arles has the superpower that you can point your camera at any street, up any alley, or at any building, and come away with an art shot. It's easy to calculate that if you shoot one of these every 30 seconds, and have a four hour walk, then you come away with 480 artistic photos. Too many to put into the blog!

This post has maybe a dozen cityscapes, a testament to photographic restraint. Yet for various purposes, including noting street names, or copying church histories, the camera came back with 68 shots taken. That is actually fewer than we have often seen, but that in no way reflects on beautiful Arles.

We went up near the Arena to start our walk, first spying it down the narrow street we were on. The arches of the arena, street lamps, and the narrowness of the street made an interesting photo. To take it, I waited for a long time for the girl on the lower left to move, but she stayed there like a statue. When I then walked up alongside her, I changed by designation from statue to "cow", for she was meditatively and indefinitely gnawing on a baguette. Of course in a city, especially a tourist city, you simply can not wait for all the people, cars, and trucks to clear out of your shot. And while you are framing the darn thing, you are probably in turn in someone else's way!

Van Gogh, of course, was also here, snapping his artistic shots with paints and memory. One of his is illustrated below, on a panel near the Arena. Of course, all the people inside, at the bull fight, are very much a part of the scene, not just standing in front of it. But he did put in rather a big crowd.

My favourite corner around the Arena has the triangular building with the bar in it. This morning, a white delivery van was standing in front of my shot. This sort of thing turned out to be a bit of a problem, clearly our fault for being out at 8 a.m., when every self respecting little delivery truck in the region is crawling about making deliveries.

With narrow streets, sometimes only a couple of vehicles equals a traffic jam.

I would hate to be driving something like this down here!

We watched a Peugeot 3008 negotiate this turn, by backing and readjusting. He made it, but as you see from the wall, it has taken a toll on both cars (lower scrapes) and trucks.

We were on the lookout for a bakery, where we would find some second breakfast items. Although to be sure there are bakeries in this town, they just did not seem to be popping up. We remembered the Banette from yesterday, but sadly found it to be out of business.

An out of business Banette is a rare thing.

We stopped in to a gourmet grocery store, and while it was interesting, it had nothing that we would consider really edible.

Beer from the Camarge, made from different rices? Naw!

Regretfully we carried on with the walk, working with no snack!

Still, nice photos were always possible. In this case, though, that car snuck in to the shot.

Here are the remains of some Roman baths, the Baths of Constantine, from the 4th century. There were hot, cold, and lukewarm bathing areas and a dry sauna.

We entered a square called Place du Forum, a place that is famous for several reasons. The forum that is part of the name was an even large square, the hub of activity that Roman forums were. There is a remnant of this on one corner, where two columns and part of a roofline recall what used to be:

Adjacent to that corner is a yellow building that figured in the Van Gogh painting "Cafe Terrace at Night", from 1888.

Although the guide says that the cafe today is called Cafe Van Gogh, and it implies that it is open. As the photo shows, though, it is called Cafe La Nuit, and it is not open! (It does say Van Gogh, though, on one wall).

Another feature of Forum Square is a statue of Joseph Étienne Frédéric Mistral (1830 – 1914) who was a French writer. In 1904, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. We were inclined to the idea that the "Mistral" wind was somehow named for Joe Mistral, but no: "The name mistral comes from the Languedoc dialect of the Occitan and means "masterly". The same wind is called mistrau in the Provençal variant of Occitan, mestral in Catalan, maestrale in Italian and Corsican, maistràle or bentu maestru in Sardinian, and majjistral in Maltese." Nothing to do with Joe!

Mistral statue is surrounded by a restaurnant.

Another spot touched by Van Gogh, by his staying there and then painting it, was the former Hotel-Dieu hospital. The place has been redeveloped, and renamed - l'Espace Van Gogh. Van Gogh stayed here after his famous ear cutting episode. There is a souvenir shop nearby, naturally with Van Gogh reproductions, as place mats and post cards. You can look at these, and over to the former hospital building and say "Yup, Vincent was here".

Another place mat at the souvenir shop shows the "Yellow House". Yes, we are coming to that!

Another Arles spot that is stuffed with significant historical buildings is the Place de la Republique. This has the 17th century town hall on one side, with the obelisk from the Roman Circus in front. To the side is the 12th century Saint-Trophime church, with a large portal - added in 1178 for the coronation of Emperor Frederic Barberousse. (I looked up Barberousse - Barbarosa - and never quite understood his power base or history. He was "Holy Roman Emperor" and had been king of Germany, Italy, Burgundy - all sorts of places. He fought with the papacy, and got excommunicated in 1165. He went on the Third Crusade, and drowned while out there, in 1190. What was he doing here in 1178?)

I looked at the portal, and noticed things like this fellow - maybe picking his nose while playing with his pet lions.

But then we read this sign:

I went back out to look for the Last Judgement stuff. I didn't quite see it, but took the photos below, thinking I could analyse it "back in the lab".

I wondered how this related. Why suck the kid's toes?

After we had toured the church and were back outside, I mentioned to Dodie that I did not get the portal, and had seen no Chosen and Damned. The same powers of observation that I value in Dodie for spotting birds then said "What about this?"

and the Damned, in the flames, with chain.

Dodie must like me, as she has kept me around for many years, but she can not understand how I could be that blind!

By the way:

Inside the church. there were some fairly high arches, unusual in this region:

We have often noted that the Pope John Paul II seemed to have been everywhere. Now here he was too, but in the strange form of a relic, containing some drops of his blood.

There was also a JP II statue, but all statues in the church were veiled. Signs indicated that they do this before Easter, and then later reveal them in a kind of rededication.

Some nice stained glass, but this was not a main focus.

JP II was not the only church celebrity on hand. They had a whole chapel of reliquaries.

Back out in the square, city hall was preparing for some sort of event. Somebody (the mayor?) was practicing waving from this second floor window, and they repeatedly readjusted the balcony decoration.

Between the Place de la Republique and the Arena lies the 1st century Roman Theater. This was a place for performances, not fights or races as with the Arena. The seating is still visible today, as are two of the hundreds of columns that once stood behind the stage. The two columns are know as the "widows".

We passed next into Place Voltaire, where we observed an old lady at a window, observing the passers by. She was equipped with a towel to cushion her arm. She must have (correctly) been anticipating a long show.

We were starting to really weaken by this point, and were still not really finding bakeries. But we found a gelato shop that also had crêpes. The lady was just opening up, and we convinced her to whip us up a couple. We both went for "marron" (chestnut) filling. I told the lady that I could never understand the difference between marron and châtaigne, and she said her neither.

In the same square a shop was displaying a tee shirt, showing Vincent sporting shades. Cute. But the image also reminded me of our brother-in-law, Erhard. I'll send it to him and see if he agrees.

Two doors down from the crêpe shop what did we find but this!

I also noticed a lot of baklava, like those below, and asked the baker where he was from. The answer was Morocco. The next questions were about the opening and closing times., which turned out to be 5:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.. So we asked when does he sleep and he replied - not - or only 4 hours per night!

One of our almost last targets was the "Yellow House" (remember that place mat?). Van Gogh rented rooms there in 1888, and he put up Paul Gaugin in a guest room. The house was outside the city wall. Perhaps that means it was a cheap place in the "suburbs"?

To get to the Yellow House we passed through the city wall. This gate is called the Porte de la Cavalarie.

It was fairly unclear which was the "Yellow House" at the spot that the GPS indicated. The partly figures, because the place was bombed in WWII. Let's call it the yellowish one on the right! Technically this is on Rue George Tinarage, while the Yellow House official address is 2 Place Lamartine. Place Lamartine is directly behind the camera, but we didn't see a darn thing there. somebody should put up a plaque for us!

Our last thing did in fact have a plaque! This was the point of view that Van Gogh used for his painting "Starry Night Over the Rhone". That was a precursor to the more famous "Starry Night", which was done in St. Remy. There is an easel with a reproduction of "Starry Night Over the Rhone" at the spot, but the view is obscured by a cruise ship. To even see the easel, we had to wait for a gaggle of tour groupers to clear off

Side stepping the tour boat, I shot down the Rhone, maybe in the way Van Gogh was looking. I could say Arles was in the painting, on the left, as in the photo here.

Approaching the town a bit, we show below some houses that could well have been there for Van Gogh as well.

In case you think we have become Van Gogh groupies, we are heading for St Remy tomorrow! But we will not be shown to be truly nuts unless we are out there tomorrow night, trying to photograph stars!

Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 1,722 km (1,069 miles)

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