Avignon & Provence: Why they draw travellers time and again

There's something about Provence, a je ne sais quoi, that marks it out from the rest of France, even from other parts of the South. The special quality of its light and accompanying, vibrant colours have attracted painters and photographers like moths to a flame, but that's only half the story.

Provence has ways of awakening all the senses, whether it's the heat on the skin, cicadas to thrill the ear, the heady scents of lavender fields or powerful flavours to enliven the palate. In short, Provence is the sensual, Mediterranean heart of France. And as befits such a visceral concept, its actual boundaries are slightly vague. The name derives from the Latin "Provincia" - it was the first truly Romanised province beyond the Alps - but these days this doesn't correspond precisely with a specific French administrative region or department. The Alps, the river Rhône and the Mediterranean provide some rough natural borders, and within them the landscape varies dramatically between hill, plain, mountain, valley canyon and the marshy delta of the Camargue. Perhaps the safest advice is that you know you're in Provence when you see the red-tiled roofs, hear the sing-song of the southern French accent or, since nothing is perfect, you feel the vicious chill of the Mistral wind and see the exorbitant prices of the holiday homes to rent.

I got my first Provençal hit during the Seventies when visiting friends in the village of Bonnieux, in the Lubéron hills, 30km or so east of Avignon. This was before the nearby Apt valley began to fill with new villas and Peter Mayle and his A Year In Provence novel stamped his brand on the area. Even so, the Lubéron, an officially protected area (or un Parc Naturel Régional), is reckoned by many to be the heart of Provence. Bonnieux itself is a classic example of a Provençal hilltop village, un village perché with houses in honey-coloured stone snaking up the hill, which is crowned by a splendid church whose spire is visible for many miles around.

The pleasures of life there were very simple. We bought fresh, local produce from the markets in Carpentras and Cavaillon, where the fruit and vegetables actually looked too good to eat, particularly the luscious, yellow Cavaillon melons. One day we invested in a truffle and grated the weird perfumed thing in tiny shavings into an omelette. No one, of course, dared say they didn't like the extraordinary taste.

In the evenings, assisted by a glass or two of pastis (another strange Provençal flavour), we joined in the local games of pétanque under the plane trees or walked across the garrigue in the moonlight, surrounded by bats and enjoying the aromas that rose from crushed thyme, sage and curry plants. The best place to swim is a lake called L'Etang de la Bonde. At one end is a campsite, where I sometimes stayed, and at the other end is a small café. A 10-minute swim was rewarded by un grand cremé and a fresh croissant, which I still count among my favourite breakfast experiences.

To appreciate the sheer scope of the Provençal landscape, not to mention the brilliant colours, you need a good vantage point. North of the Luberon but visible from it, is the imposing outline and conical peak of Mont Ventoux, a distant outcrop of the Alps and reaching 1,909m. Followers of the Tour de France will remember it as the mountain where British cyclist Tommy Simpson collapsed and died in 1967 and there is a monument to him on the way to the summit. On a clear day, the view from the top is quite awe-inspiring, taking in a good stretch of the Alps, including Mont Blanc, to the east, and, if you're very lucky, Corsica to the south.

Unfortunately a clear day often coincides with the icy blasts of the Mistral wind that blows from the north for up to 100 days a year; don't forget your coat, even in summer, which is when the fields of lavender and corn spread out around Mont Ventoux in a striking patchwork of blueish-purple and gold.

You can enjoy the lavender closer at hand and immerse yourself in local customs in the village of Sault, a winding 26km descent from the top of the mountain. In mid-August it hosts a lavender festival to celebrate the plant that has become synonymous with Provence. The festivities include sickle-cutting competitions, traditional Provençal parades, local music and no shortage of red and rosé wine from the Côtes du Ventoux vineyards

Rivalling Mont Ventoux as Provence's favourite mountain is Mont Sainte-Victoire, just outside the elegant city of Aix-en-Provence. It was the favourite subject of the most Provençal of the great painters whose names are associated with the region. As Natasha Edwards writes (see pages XIV-XV), Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire getting on for 100 times, in all seasons and from all vantage points. It's best appreciated from the Route de Marguerite, which is one of the stops on the Cézanne route, an engaging tour through the key places in his life which helps you get to know both painter and city.

Among Provence's cities, Aix is the most relaxing, with its pleasing 17th- and 18th-century architecture, its café life and a fountain around virtually every corner. It doesn't, though, have the monumental buildings of Avignon, the Roman heritage of Arles or the exuberance of Marseille.

Multi-cultural, throbbing, sleazy and exciting, Marseille is the Mediterranean port par excellence. It's home to one of the world's most interesting experiments in public housing, Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse. It has also given us that love-it-or-hate-it drink, pastis, not to mention the fish stew to end all fish stews, bouillabaisse.

Whether or not the dish, dubbed the soupe d'or ("golden soup") by one French gastronome, was actually invented here is open to question. But there is an entertaining legend, told in Marseille, to explain its origins. The goddess of love, Venus is supposed to have served the dish to her husband, Vulcan, to lull him to sleep while she went off to have a good time with Mars. An important ingredient of a bouillabaisse is saffron (along with fennel seeds and orange zest) and saffron is reputed to have soporific qualities. As Provençal cuisine goes, my experience is that Bouillabaisse is unusual in its complexity, since most of the food here tends towards the simple, fresh and seasonal, reflected in the culinary label à la provençale - cooked with garlic, olives and olive oil.

It would be wrong to see Provence as a temperate kind of place. In the summer it can be fiendishly hot and much as you'd like to walk there, it's best to keep to the water - the calanques (coves) near Marseille, for instance, or down near the water in the shaded canyon of the spectacular canyon formed by the river Verdon.

The dramatic and harsher side of the landscape, and life in it, was vividly captured by the writer Marcel Pagnol, particularly in the stories that became the successful films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources.

As merely an occasional visitor, my own feelings about Provence are summed up by a night I once spent with my partner, just outside the village of Bar-sur-Loup in the coastal hills between Nice and the celebrated perfume town of Grasse. We were staying at an eccentric inn in the midst of an olive grove and the night was so hot that we kept the French windows open. The temperature carried on rising until there was a most explosive thunderstorm. Then as the the rain cascaded down in torrents, a choir of about one million frogs in a pond in the hotel grounds burst into song and the sensual extravaganza was completed by an overwhelming scent of strawberry, which flowed down from a nearby perfume factory.

THE ART OF RELAXATION

The lizards have the answer. From early May until harvest-time, when the sun takes up more or less permanent residence in Provence, they are a study in contented indolence, absorbing the fierce heat while doing as little as possible. There is much to be said for taking a leaf out of their book.

From over-the-border Monaco to St-Tropez, by way of Cannes, Nice, Antibes and Juan-les-Pins, the Côte d'Azur is unarguably glamorous, glitzy, stylish and sexy. The trouble is, the whole world already knows this - and from May to September, everyone seems to have got there first. And they all have cars, which have to travel on roads ill-equipped to absorb their numbers. And those cars have to find parking spaces. And when their hot and bothered occupants finally emerge, the public beaches - alluring as they are - are not always expansive enough to provide them with elbow room.

Take your chances on the coast if you must, but a more rewarding way to enjoy summer in Provence is to emulate the lizard.

Less than 20km from Nice, two exquisite, medieval villages perchés - Gourdon and Tourrettes sur Loup - cling to the slopes on either side of the precipitous Gorges du Loup. Packed with photo opportunities, restaurants and galleries, both are ideal for whiling away a lunchtime, then an afternoon, and possibly an evening too. A short distance inland from Cannes, well-heeled Mougins is another strikingly attractive hill-top town, with some of the finest restaurants in the region. North of St-Tropez, in the Var region, Les Arcs is perched on one large rock, and Cotignac appears to have been hewn out of another, the sheer cliff towering over its tiny lanes, many of which have been colonised by artists. Nearby, across the dense Côtes de Provence vineyards, Entrecasteaux has a magnificent 17th-century castle (00 33 494 04 43 95; open daily).

The spa culture, where you do nothing while someone else expends energy doing things to you, is well-established on the Côte d'Azur. Thalassotherapy is especially popular - a revitalising combination of jet showers, bubbling baths, seaweed and mud masks - and can be sampled at all the major resorts, such as at The Miramar Beach Hôtel, between Cannes and St-Tropez (47 Avenue de Miramar, Théoule-sur-Mer; 00 33 493 75 05 05; www.mbhriviera.com).

Too much like hard work? Take in the sea air, enjoy the views, and look down on stripped, sweltering humanity from the high ground that backdrops many of the famous beaches. Could there be a more pleasing combination than an hour-long stroll past the villas and sub-tropical gardens of Cap Ferrat, pausing at the pretty lighthouse, and returning to the famous Grand-Hôtel (www.grand-hotel-cap-ferrat.com) for an aperitif, just in time for sunset? It might set you back a few euros, but you don't have to be a resident to make use of the sun terrace, and think what you save on parking fees and not having to hire a sun-lounger by avoiding the daily rat-race to the beach.

Frank Partridge

Details of all the major Côte d'Azur spas are available at www.guideriviera.com

Interesting? Click here to explore further