Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence sits at the foot of the Alpilles, 20 km south of Avignon, and it has three separate claims on a visitor: a Roman town on its edge, the asylum where Van Gogh painted The Starry Night, and one of the best markets in Provence.

It is also where Nostradamus was born, in 1503, in a house you can still find in the old town.

Glanum

A kilometre south of the town, at a spring in a gap in the hills, lies the excavated town of Glanum — Gaulish, then Greek-influenced, then thoroughly Roman, abandoned in the third century and buried under alluvium until 1921.

Two monuments stand outside the entrance and never were buried: the mausoleum of about 40 BC, one of the best-preserved Roman funerary monuments anywhere, and a triumphal arch of the same period. Together they are known as Les Antiques, and they are free to walk up to — the excavated town beyond them is ticketed.

Van Gogh

Van Gogh admitted himself voluntarily to the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, in a twelfth-century monastery next to Glanum, in May 1889, after the events at Arles. He stayed a year, and it was the most productive of his life: about 150 paintings, including The Starry Night, the irises, the olive groves and the wheatfield outside his window.

The cloister and a reconstruction of his room are open; the building is still a working psychiatric clinic, which is worth knowing before you go. A marked trail through the town and the fields sets reproductions at the spots where he painted them.

The town

The old centre is a ring of boulevards around a knot of lanes — plane trees, fountains, shuttered facades, and a density of good food shops and galleries that reflects who has moved here. It takes an hour to walk.

The Hôtel de Sade holds the finds from Glanum; the Musée Estrine covers Van Gogh’s time here and shows modern painting.

The market

Wednesday morning, through the whole centre, and it is one of the two or three best in Provence — produce, olive oil, cheese, herbs, fabric, brocante. Get there early; by eleven the streets are solid.

What to eat

The Alpilles produce one of the best olive oils in France — Vallée des Baux-de-Provence AOP — and the mills around Maussane sell direct. Otherwise the Provençal repertoire, and the wine of Les Baux, mostly organic and mostly good.

See Provençal cuisine.

Getting to Saint-Rémy

• By bus — from Avignon in about 45 minutes, several times a day. Better than it sounds, because there is no station.
• By train — no station. Avignon TGV is 20 km, Tarascon 15 km.
• By car — 20 minutes from Avignon. Park on the ring boulevards; on Wednesdays the centre is closed for the market and the car parks fill early. See parking in France.

Around Saint-Rémy

• Les Baux-de-Provence — 10 km, the fortress village on its crag
• The Alpilles — walking and cycling through olive groves and white limestone
• Arles — 25 km, and Van Gogh’s other town
• Avignon — 20 km
• Tarascon — with its river castle, 15 km west

When to go

April to June and September to October. The Alpilles are hot and shadeless in high summer, and the town is very busy in August. May has the transhumance festival, when the flocks are driven through the streets on their way to the mountains.

See when to visit Provence.

Weather in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

Updated: 9 September 2026