Aix-en-Provence walking tour & city guide

Cours Mirabeau and the fountains

The Cours Mirabeau is the city's grand avenue, shaded by a double row of plane trees, with stately 17th- and 18th-century mansions on one side and café terraces on the other. At its western end, the Fontaine de la Rotonde is a great fountain crowned by three statues, and halfway along, a moss-covered fountain still runs with warm spring water.

Aix is called the city of a thousand fountains, and walking its streets you pass one on almost every square, from the Four Dolphins fountain in the quiet Mazarin quarter to the fountain of the Place d'Albertas.

The old town and Cézanne

North of the Cours, the old town is a web of lanes and squares. The Place de l'Hôtel de Ville has a clock tower and a flower market, and Saint-Sauveur Cathedral mixes styles from the 5th-century baptistery to Gothic. The Musée Granet holds art from old masters to Cézanne.

Cézanne was born in Aix, and you can visit his last studio, the Atelier de Cézanne, on a hill north of the center. From the nearby Terrain des Peintres you can see the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the mountain he painted more than eighty times.

A classic walk through Aix

Start at the Fontaine de la Rotonde and stroll up the Cours Mirabeau. Turn south into the Mazarin quarter to the Four Dolphins fountain, then cross back into the old town via the Place d'Albertas to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville.

Continue to Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, and if you have the energy, walk on uphill to the Atelier de Cézanne. Without the studio, the walk is about 3 kilometers.

Visiting tips

Market mornings are the best time to see the old town at its liveliest. Aix is about 30 minutes from Marseille by bus or car and about three hours from Paris by high-speed train. In early summer the lavender fields of Provence and the Luberon villages are within easy reach.