Cezanne, Aix and Carcassonne

                                 Cezanne, Aix and Carcassonne

I first visited the medieval Cite of Carcassonne many years ago, aged 29 or 30. I was driving through France with a friend, on the way to visit other friends who were holidaying close to Perpignan near the eastern Spanish border. Our route took us past Carcassonne and, on catching sight of the Cite’s amazing profile, we diverted for a short visit.

At that time, I knew nothing about Carcassonne or the troubled history of that region of France. My reaction to the distant view was that it was a wonderful modern fantasy, a Disneyland-style construction, a medieval theme park. This impression was not immediately dissipated when we entered over the drawbridge - ghastly tourist tat shops were the first thing encountered (as today).

I can’t remember whether I cautiously retreated from my error (hey, this may be real!), but when I next returned I was better informed.

Carcassonne was one the great fortified cities of medieval France. It endured several wars, sieges and conquests (and rebuildings); but ultimately it fell into ruins when the south of France was no longer contested territory. “Modern” Carcassonne grew outside the old walls. However, the old Cite survived with enough presence to warrant preservation and reconstruction in the 19th Century, under State auspices. Many have criticised the restoration as inauthentic. My preferred view is that the Cite is “real”, just as much as many ancient structures that altered, rebuilt or restored over the centuries (UNESCO seems to agree: it is a World Heritage Site). But, but.. the Cite is still too full of tourists and tourist tat. For those reasons it is simultaneously a medieval theme park.

My latest visit to the Cite was a stop off on the way back from Aix en Provence. Aix is also an ancient city, dating back to Roman times. It has preserved much of its medieval and early modern character. The Cathedral, indeed, built on the site of the Roman Forum, incorporates in its baptistery columns form a Roman temple.

Traffic is largely forbidden from the centre. (Instead it snarls at speed around an inner ring road.) On certain mornings many streets and squares are given over to a vast market of food, clothing and ornaments of all sorts. A large student population adds to the City’s vibrancy.

Aix is the home town of Cezanne, to which he returned to live and paint for many years, eventually dying there. Aix has celebrated 2025 as the “Year of Cezanne”. There was a big exhibition of his local paintings in the main museum (to visit which was the prime purpose of our visit). Tours of Cezanne’s house, his later studio and the quarry of red stone that he continually painted were sold out.

It was still possible, for a small fee, to wander around the garden of the house (Jas de Bouffan) and see the views of it that Cezanne painted, including the adjacent farm buildings. The house and the farm once stood in the countryside outside Aix, but now survive (just) the suburbs pressing on three sides and a motorway passing near on the fourth. This fate, including a motorway, is uncannily similar to what has happened to Lorca country house in Granada (see Blog March 2025). Scattered throughout the garden are replicas of paintings, precisely showing the viewpoints employed by Cezanne. This heightens the sense that one has entered the the artist’s world. Everything is subtlely recognisable, but yet so different from Cezanne’s time, place and vision .

Another of Cezanne’s recurring subjects, the looming and craggy Montagne Sainte Victoire, can no longer be readily seen from the city. But a short drive into the countryside brought it into impressive view- starker than in Cezanne’s paintings. The mountain is massive compared to the low countryside that foregrounds it; craggy, but inviting the the rendering into flat planes that Cezanne achieved. He painted it again and again, attempting the fusion of the mountain’s visual impression and the deep feelings it aroused. For him, something profound was different, or just out of reach, with each painterly attempt. Yet in the trying he fathered modern art.

There’s a curiously named street in old Aix: “Rifle-Rafle”, or, in the Occitan dialect, “Riflo-Raflo”. It is certainly the linguistic ancestor to the modern pejorative “riffraff”. But its original medieval meaning in Old French, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was the very inclusive “one and all”. No doubt elites came to want to be ‘included out’ of this broad designation ..

The thought occurred to me, later in Carcassonne, that the name with all its connotations would be ideally suited to the Main Street that welcomes the tourists inside the entrance to the Cite.

Oct 2025