Shaped by nature and washed by the tides of history, Aix-en-Provence was once a crossroads between south and north, Mediterranean and Alps, Italy and Spain. "Sleeping beauty" for over a hundred years, it owes its promotion among the global crossroads to a "not-always-benign" political neglect that it suffered in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Re-awakening in the mid twentieth century, Aix (re)-discovers that its fountains, Roman and pre-Roman stones, its labyrinthine medieval streets, rectified and gentrified by gracious seventeenth and eighteenth century mansions, and to its incomparable "Cezannian countryside", charms neither withered by age, staled by custom, nor ignored by the tourists. Between revolutionary times and the second half of the twentieth century its cafés, churches, cathedral, festivals, and museums today attract admirers from the world over and, crowning irony, the Paris-Marseille main-line railway wich snubbed it rudely a century and a half ago, has bestowed upon it its own T.G.V. station, a tribute to the effects of its beauty slumber ?

Tourist Office Aix-en-Provence
2, place Général de Gaulle - BP 60
13605 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 1
tel. : +33 (0)4 42 16 11 61 - Fax : +33 (0)4 42 16 11 62

www.aixenprovencetourism.com
www.provencelive.com (Practical information in English)