The best towns in Provence

To master the Provençal life, you need to get to grips with the thriving towns of Aix, Arles and Avignon

Let us be bold. There is no cluster of towns in France - perhaps in Europe - with the aura of the Provençal A-team, Aix, Arles and Avignon.

They embody the sensual south, with its past of popes, Romans and countrymen, its bullfighters, painters and sense that things might get warmly out of hand when the sun goes down.

These places are, in a way, where Provence happens, and, if you haven’t visited them, you haven’t been to Provence at all. So, do it soon, for a late-season blast of heat, history and herby dishes on nighttime terraces. To help you, here’s our assessment of the A-team’s members.

AIX-EN-PROVENCE

Up the road from Marseilles, Aix is the port’s brainier little brother - the one with glasses, a bow tie and a know-it-all smile. It has been a university town for ever. In the 15th century, Good King René held his court here, filling it with artists and intellectuals. Later, the bourgeoisie put up the grand townhouses of the Mazarin district, which still conceal more than they reveal.

Then came Cézanne. Aix is terribly proud of him. This is, however, a recent development. Aix loathed its weirdo artist when he was alive, and for some time afterwards. It was left to American cash to save Cézanne’s studio (9 Avenue Paul Cézanne; 00 33-4 42 21 06 53, www.atelier-cezanne.com ; £4.60), and it’s now one of Aix’s best visits. The spot where he completed his last works has been left as if the old boy had just popped out for another look at the Mont Sainte-Victoire. Behind a huge window are his bowler hat, a smock and the clutter that starred in his still lifes. “Some visitors burst into tears,” a local guide says.

Not me, I’m afraid – the studio is fascinating, and the work is easy to admire, but somehow difficult to love - so it’s back to the Café des Deux Garçons, where Cézanne drank, though not with excess conviviality, on the central Cours Mirabeau. Wide, lined with plane trees and townhouses, studded with fountains and bars, this is the greatest avenue of southern France, evincing not a shred of self-doubt.

Behind, however, the tone changes. Aix scurries through vital little streets, bursting into squares made grand for the town hall, courts, churches and similar. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, much of this old Aix is overlaid with Provence’s best market, its stallholders so obviously wide boys, they must be honest. I pick up cherries, pâté and, from a bric-a-brac stall, a long-needed Lynyrd Skynyrd album.

In Rue Gaston Saporta, Renaissance frontages press in. The cathedral of St Sauveur has delightful cloisters, but if you’re hoping to see Froment’s majestic Moses and the Burning Bush triptych (I always am), it’s away being restored. So, the prettiest thing in town is Baciccio’s wooden model for a baptistry dome in Rome. It’s in the otherwise dowdy Musée du Vieil Aix (04 42 21 43 55, www.aixenprovencetourism.com ; £3.30), back down the street, and flows with colour, light and movement.

Then it’s evening. Little streets such as Rue Bédarrides and Rue des Tanneurs spill out an entire civilisation of bars and terraces. Heaven knows how there are enough people to go round them all, but there are. Tucked away in the heart of the warren, the tiny, table-packed Place Ramus gets lively later, doubtless because it takes people longer to stumble on it. Take a low-lit seat outside Chez Maxime, order the daube – and tell me you’re not happy.

To stay and eat: if money’s no object, try Villa Gallici (Avenue de la Violette; 04 42 23 29 23, www.villagallici.com ; doubles from £175 in low season, £255 high). Smallish, in romantico-Provençal style, it has gardens and a classy restaurant; dinner £72. The credit-crunched might consider the central Hôtel Quatre Dauphins (54 Rue Roux Alphéran; 04 42 38 16 39, www.lesquatredauphins.fr ; doubles from £55/£61).

Best table in town is the Clos de la Violette (10 Avenue de la Violette; 04 42 23 30 71, www.closdelaviolette.com ; lunch from £40, dinner £72). Old Aix throbs with cheaper eateries, too, including Chez Maxime (12 Place Ramus; 04 42 26 28 51, www.restaurant-chezmaxime.com ; lunch from £11, dinner £17).

ARLES
Of the A-team, Arles is the one where southern blood pumps fiercest - during bullfights at the stunning Roman arena, it pumps right out onto the sand. The last corrida I saw there was a duff abattoir show. That said, you need to see the arena in action to get a feel for the great, 1st-century-AD days of live entertainment: go for the bull games (courses camarguaises), where it’s still man v beast, but the beast lives on (08 91 70 03 70, www.arenes-arles.com ; Wed at 5pm until Sept 4; £6.30).

Then - and please don’t say I told you this - canter round the rest of classical Arles at a fair old lick. You can see all you need of the Roman theatre and baths from the streets, without paying. The real spectacle is elsewhere, on the main Boulevard des Lices, in the market and in the seething squeeze of streets running away from the arena. They strain to contain both local exuberance and roaming visitors. Here are cowboys in from the Camargue and women en route to some festival or other, wearing the prettiest traditional dress - shawls, lace, high collars, long skirts - a woman can wear.

Eventually, the labyrinth chucks you out towards Place du Forum, where the Café de Nuit remains, outside at least, much as Van Gogh painted it (though it’s gone a bit loungey inside). Ah, yes. Van Gogh. Turning to him after Cézanne in Aix is like opening curtains and letting in sunlight. Van Gogh, too, was hated by the townsfolk. After the ear-lopping episode, they circulated a petition to have him banged up in a bin.

The dislike was mutual. Arles, said Van Gogh, was “filthy... with a rather squalid casualness”. Yet, fuelled by coffee and alcohol, he painted like billyo - 300 works in 15 months - defining a new way of handling not only Provence, but colour itself. None of his canvases remains in a town that now, obviously, fêtes him as a favoured son.

The gardens of Arles hospital have been recreated, just as Van Gogh painted them when committed there. The building is now the Espace Van Gogh, and jolly peaceful (or would have been, if 40 American visitors hadn’t been agreeing loudly how peaceful it was). By the arena, someone has recreated Van Gogh’s bedroom, as painted by himself. “It is a unique feeling to be in Vincent’s room,” we are told. Certainly, it’s unique. This is the only rip-off in Arles. Avoid it, go for a drink–and prepare for a long night in, um, ear-splitting bars.

To stay and eat: the slightly raffish Grand Hôtel Nord-Pinus (Place du Forum; 04 90 93 44 44, www.nord-pinus. com ; doubles from £127), bang in the centre of things, is the classic Arles spot for tales of travel, bullfighting, art and drink. Infinitely more modest, but comfortable and just off the hurly-burly, is the two-star Hôtel Constantin (59 Boulevard Craponne; 04 90 96 04 05, www.arles-hotel-constantin.com ; doubles from £39 in low season, £42 high).

Jean-Luc Rabanel’s ultra-fashionable Med-meets-Asia cooking bagged him the French Chef of the Year award from GaultMillau in 2007 (L’Atelier, 7 Rue des Carmes; 04 90 91 07 69, www.rabanel.com ; menu £54). Down the street, he runs the cheaper, minimalist Bistro à Côté (21 Rue des Carmes; 04 90 47 61 13; mains from £10).

AVIGNON
I have a friend who lives in the wriggling little streets of Avignon. “It’s okay,” she says, “but a bit seedy.” Seedy? The papal city and former centre of Christianity? Well, she’d just had her car (resale value £2.35) stolen from outside her door, so she’s biased. She’s also right.

Away from the centre, the alleys and tiny thoroughfares decline to dowdy quite quickly, with little leavening sense of gaiety. It’s as if the city has run out of energy, so relies on its monuments to keep it going. Luckily, it has the greatest Provençal monument of all: the Papal Palace (04 90 27 50 00, www.palais-des-papes.com ; £8.30 in high season, £6.70 low). Rising sheer, powerful and gothic, the vast edifice radiates authority still. Given half a chance, it would be running Christendom again in the time it took to dismantle the European Union.

It’s mainly empty, and the imagination struggles to refurnish it with medieval magnificence, but the scale is overwhelming, the views are arresting and the private papal chambers retain their startling frescoes. Not that the pontiffs had much time to appreciate them, if the poet Petrarch is to be believed.

“A thoroughfare of vices,” he wrote, “where prostitutes swarm over papal beds.” The image, you’ll agree, is riveting. Seediness has a history here.

Outside the palace, Avignon remains monumental. The cathedral is next door, and the Petit Palais (Place du Palais des Papes; 04 90 86 44 58, www.petit-palais.org ; £5), with its decent selection of early Italian paintings, is nearby. As is the 100ft Doms rock, boasting lovely gardens, a puzzling statue of an Armenian agronomist and a dominant perspective over the most famous fifth-of-a-bridge in the world. Le Pont looks lovely from up here.

Little is gained by going down and paying to walk along it - it’s a rather ordinary, broken old bridge, testimony only to the power of a children’s song.(A mistaken one, at that; as everyone knows, the dancing was sous, not sur, le pont.) Time would be more pro-fitably spent ambling the lively streets off the main Rue de la République. These retain a scurrying sense of southern life and commerce.

You may carry on to Rue des Teinturiers, where the River Sorgue still runs under water wheels. The dyers (teinturiers) have ceded place to ethnic bars, tiny theatres and blokes with pony-tails selling rubbish from the Orient. Lively, though. By evening, return to the central Place de l’Horloge. Southern city life pumps through it, from bar to restaurant and on through the night. The women would turn any pontiff’s head. Of the A-team members, Avignon is my least favourite - but, seated at a terrace with music swirling round me, I can’t always remember why. To stay and eat: top of the tree is Hôtel d’Europe (14 Place Crillon; 04 90 14 76 76, www.heurope.com ; doubles from £134, then steeply upwards), with an eclectic past guest list - Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Jackie Kennedy. In a different, but charming, league is Hôtel Médiéval (15 Rue Petite Saunerie; 04 90 86 11 06, www.hotelmedieval.com ; doubles from £46).

Housed in a former palace, Christian Etienne’s restaurant (10 Rue de Mons; 04 90 86 16 50, www.christian-etienne.fr ; lunch £28, dinner from £52) has the best reputation in town. The warm and eccentric L’Epice and Love (30 Rue des Lices; 04 90 82 45 96; menus from £14) has a deserved fan base. Getting there: Eurostar (0870 518 6186, www.eurostar.com ) has a direct, 5hr 50min rail service from London St Pan-cras to Avignon until September 13. Flybe (0871 700 2000, www.flybe.com ) has flights to Avignon from Exeter and Southampton; Jet2 (0871 226 1737, www.jet2.com ) flies there from Leeds/Bradford and Edinburgh.

Nîmes is the nearest airport to Arles. Fly there with Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com ), from Luton, East Midlands or Liverpool.

Marseilles is the nearest airport to Aix. Ryanair flies there from Stansted and six regional airports. Or try EasyJet (www.easyjet.com ), BMI Baby (0871 224 0224, www.bmibaby.com ) or British Airways (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com ).

If you’d like a package, French Travel Service (0844 848 8843, www.f-t-s.co.uk ) has three-night B&B deals in three-star hotels, including rail travel, from £310pp in Aix and £389pp in Avignon; a four-night deal in Arles is £472pp. Or try VFB Holidays (01452 716840, www.vfbholidays.co.uk ) or Kirker (020 7593 1899, www.kirkerholidays.com ).