Day Trip to Arles

Today was Arles-tastic.

After an hour bus ride through the Provencal countryside, dotted with almond trees in spectacular white and pink bloom, we arrived in Arles. Famous for its ancient Roman ruins and once renowned, but now dilapidated cemetery, Vincent Van Gogh lived in Arles for two years and painted some of his most well-known works in the charming city.

After grabbing a quick cafe, Pam walked us through the weekly Saturday market to the outskirts of town, where we stumbled upon Alyscamps, an ancient, tragically beautiful Roman necropolis. Situated away from the main city center, as the Romans believed in separated spaces for the land of the living and the dead, the cemetery was once enormous and housed nearly 80 generations in its acres. Hundreds of years ago, people would send their deceased down the Rhone river to Arles, where a man would take a coin out of the deceased's mouth as payment for his burial services. Due to modernization of the 19th century, Alyscamps is now much smaller, but still has many of its original stone tombs and a Medieval church on its grounds.

It was an almost unsettling place-- especially the cave-like, dark and dank church where the cooing of pigeons echoing off the stone walls was magnified nearly ten times and sent chills down my spine.

Les Alyscamps according to Van Gogh.

After a quick run through of the everything market (food, clothes, fabric, jewelry, books, paintings, flowers, dishwear, knick-knacks) and a bite to eat, we hit up the Roman ampitheatre, then theatre.

Julius Ceasar rewarded Arles by officially "Romanizing" it in 80 A.D. This included building the 20,000 seater ampitheatre, public theatre for dramas, and baths. Today, the ampitheatre is still in use as a lively site for bull fights, and was used in the Middle Ages as a fortified city with nearly 200 houses and 2 churches. When we arrived, Pam led us into the arena, explained the history, then let us climb to the top of an old watch tower to take in the amazing views.

When Pam led us into the open-air theatre in the shape of a semi-circle next to the ampitheatre, she began explaining the significance of some columns behind the stage, and her voice echoed throughout the space just as the design intended it to. After wandering around a bit, we found ourselves simply lounging about on the stone seats, trying to think of lines from various monologues that we could dramatically preform (if we dared) on stage. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!" and "Four score and seven years ago..." were thrown around a lot, but no one could bring themselves to move as the sun had sedated us into a brief spell of laziness.

After a quick dip below the ground to an old storehouse/place for cult worship (archeologists haven't quite decided) below the old Roman forum, we went to the hospital where Van Gogh was treated after her cut off his ear.

The story goes that Van Gogh was fighting with Gauguin, another artist living and painting in Arles, and tensions rose between the two. After stalking Gauguin with a razor, Van Gogh chopped of his own ear lobe and gave it to a prostitute named Rachel, wrapping it in a newspaper and telling her to "keep this object carefully". Upon discovering what the object was, Rachel promptly screamed (I imagine at least!), then notified the police, who found Van Gogh almost dead on his apartment floor from loss of blood.

A self-portrait of Van Gogh sans one ear lobe.

And that was Arles. It was lovely to walk around and soak up a place that is without tourist pretension. The perfect day trip.

Pictures here! Click Arles at the top.