Arles

Greek merchants from Massalia sailed up the Rhône in the 6th century BC and found a hill rising out of the marshes, the first point upstream from the sea where the river could be crossed, at the meeting of the routes from Italy to Spain. Rome took the town in 123 BC and rewarded it for backing Julius Caesar against Pompey with the possessions of Marseille, which had chosen the other side. Founded as a colony for veterans of the Sixth Legion, it gained an amphitheatre, a theatre, a circus, baths built by Constantine I and a full circuit of walls, and in 395 it became the seat of the Praetorian Prefecture of the Gauls.

After the empire fell, Arles remained a great religious centre and the seat of church councils. After a revolt in 735–739 it was sacked and brought to heel by the Carolingians, and in the 10th century it gave its name to the Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles; in 1178 the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was crowned in its cathedral. In the 12th century Arles became a free city governed by an elected podestat, and in 1239 it joined the county of Provence. An important Jewish community lived here from Roman times until a pogrom in 1484 and its expulsion at the end of the 15th century.

The town prospered as a Rhône port until the railways took the river trade in the 19th century. Vincent van Gogh arrived on 21 February 1888 and stayed until May 1889, painting over 300 works. Bombing in 1944 destroyed more than a quarter of the town's housing, around the bridges and the station. The Roman and Romanesque monuments were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.

Arles thinks of itself as a capital of Provençal culture and of the Camargue. Its gardians, the mounted herdsmen who raise the delta's horses and black bulls, are part of the town's image, and the arena holds both the bloodless courses camarguaises, in which men try to snatch a tassel from a bull's horns, and the Spanish-style corridas of the two ferias. The Easter feria opens the French bullfighting season and brings crowds of several hundred thousand into the streets. The Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral was born near the town, and the Museon Arlaten is devoted to Provençal ethnography.

The town has a long connection with painters — Van Gogh above all, as well as Gauguin, Picasso and Jacques Réattu — and since 1970 it has been a centre of photography through the Rencontres d'Arles, co-founded by the local photographer Lucien Clergue. The publisher Actes Sud is based here, and in recent years the LUMA Foundation, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles and the Lee Ufan Foundation have added contemporary art spaces and galleries. Arles was part of Marseille-Provence 2013, the European Capital of Culture year.

The Gipsy Kings, the flamenco-pop band, come from Arles. Jeanne Calment, the oldest person whose age has been documented, was born, lived and died here, reaching 122.

The commune had about 52,000 residents in 2023, spread over the largest territory of any commune in metropolitan France, about 759 square kilometres. Besides the town itself it includes villages and hamlets across the Camargue, such as Salin-de-Giraud, Raphèle-lès-Arles and Le Sambuc. From 2001 to 2020 the town was led by a Communist mayor.

Tourism is the town's main activity, and publishing and the arts organisations that have settled here add to it. Arles is also a river port and transshipment point on the Rhône, and the Camargue around it grows cereals, vegetables and, since the late 1940s, rice, alongside salt works and cattle farms. Outer districts such as Barriol and Le Trébon have been the subject of urban renewal schemes.

The old town's day revolves around its squares and the markets on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, one of the largest open-air markets in the region. Summer evenings fill the terraces, while the ferias and the photography festival bring sudden crowds. The mistral sweeps through in winter, and drought is a growing local concern.

Arles cooks from the Camargue. Gardiane, also called daube camarguaise, is the signature dish — a stew of Camargue bull meat with olives and red wine from the delta's vineyards. The bull meat itself has a protected designation of origin, Taureau de Camargue. Camargue rice, grown in the delta since at least the Middle Ages and widely since the 1940s, carries a protected geographical indication, and the September feria is the Feria du Riz, the rice feria.

The saucisson d'Arles, a dry sausage, is said to have been invented in the town in 1655 by a charcutier named Godart. The Wednesday and Saturday markets sell marinated olives and cheeses, and the restaurants of the old-town side streets and the Place du Forum serve Provençal cooking alongside the Camargue dishes. Salt from the Camargue's salt pans is another product of the delta.

Pastis is the usual aperitif, and local wines are poured with meals.