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Stay in the heart of Provence
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Aix-en-Provence 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?
Pertuis  Nestling
around the remnants of its medieval fortifications, buffeted by
constant and vicious rivalry between church, barony, and merchant,
Pertuis has preserved many disparate fragments of its rich, varied,
and turbulent past. Preferring the hustle and bustle of economic
survival to the fate of neighboring "museum-villages",
immaculate hostages to their age and beauty, Pertuis spilled over
its ramparts in the 18th century, gaining a generous foothold in
the "orchard-vineyard" countryside that lies between the
Luberon and neighboring Durance river, the source of its earliest
settlements. Pertuis' modern ramparts, unlovely commercial emporia,
are an unpromising prelude to a glorious symphony of châteaux,
villages, abbeys, and vineyards extending northwards to the calm
majesty of the Luberon, inviting visitors to step outside time,
where, in contrast to the town's turbulent history, muted colors,
contours, and scents blend in the light of Provence and nourish
the soul.
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ATMIR Aix en Provence - Parc d'Ariane - bâtiment D - 11, Bd de la Grande Thumine 13090 Aix en Provence - France - Access map |
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Administration
: Tél. 04 42 95 27 18 - Fax 04 42 95 27 20
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Copyright
© 2008 A.T.M.I.R.