Arles in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region
Saturday, 16 May 2015 - 12:43 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: European Union / Europäische Union General , French Riviera , UNESCO World Heritage
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Town Hall on Place de la République © flickr.com – Wolfgang Staudt
🔊 Listen to this Post
Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the
Bouches-du-Rhône department , of which it is a subprefecture, in the former
province of Provence . As part of the cultural initiative of the European Union’s
European Capital of Culture , Arles is one of the convention and exhibition venues of Marseille-Provence 2013.
The Rhône river forks into two branches just upstream of Arles, forming the Camargue delta. Because the Camargue is for a large part administratively part of Arles, the commune as a whole is the largest commune in Metropolitan France in terms of territory, although its population is only slightly more than 50,000. Its area is 758.93 km2 (293.02 sq mi), which is more than seven times the area of Paris .
European Capital of Culture map Marseille-Provence 2013 © arlestourisme.com
This made it an attractive destination for the painter
Vincent van Gogh , who arrived there on 21 February 1888. He was fascinated by the Provençal landscapes, producing over 300 paintings and drawings during his time in Arles. Many of his most famous paintings were completed there, including
The Night Cafe , the
Yellow Room ,
Starry Night Over the Rhone , and
L’Arlésienne .
Paul Gauguin visited van Gogh in Arles. However, van Gogh’s mental health deteriorated and he became alarmingly eccentric, culminating in the infamous ear-severing incident in December 1888 which resulted in two stays in the
Old Hospital of Arles . The concerned Arlesians circulated a petition the following February demanding that van Gogh be confined. In May 1889 he took the hint and left Arles for the
Saint-Paul asylum at nearby
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence .
A well known photography festival,
Rencontres d’Arles , takes place in Arles every year, and the French national school of photography is located there.
Bull fights are conducted in the
amphitheatre , including Provençal-style bullfights (
courses camarguaises ) in which the bull is not killed but rather a team of athletic men attempt to remove a tassle from the bull’s horn without getting injured. Every Easter and on the first weekend of September, Arles also holds Spanish-style
corridas (in which the bulls are killed) with an
encierro (bull-running in the streets) preceding each fight.
Read more on
City of Arles ,
Arles Tourism and
Wikipedia Arles . Learn more about the
use of photos . To inform you about latest news most of the city, town or tourism websites offer a newsletter service and/or operate Facebook pages/Twitter accounts. In addition more and more destinations, tourist organizations and cultural institutions offer Apps for your Smart Phone or Tablet, to provide you with a mobile tourist guide (
Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State -
Weather report by weather.com -
Global Passport Power Rank -
Travel Risk Map -
Democracy Index -
GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank -
Global Competitiveness Report -
Corruption Perceptions Index -
Press Freedom Index -
World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index -
UN Human Development Index -
Global Peace Index -
Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index ). If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at
comment@wingsch.net . Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.
VIDEO
Recommended posts:
[caption id="attachment_26670" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Jleon/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The New York Times Building is a skyscraper on the west side of Midtown Manhattan that was completed in 2007. Its chief tenant is The New York Times Company, publisher of The New York Times as well as the International New York Times, and other newspapers. The building is tied with the Chrysler Building as the fourth tallest building in New York City, after only One World Trade Center, Empire State Building und Bank of...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_220509" align="aligncenter" width="590"] American Airlines Boing 757 landing at Toncontin International Airport © flickr.com - enrique galeano morales/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Tegucigalpa, formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District (Spanish: Tegucigalpa, Municipio del Distrito Central or Tegucigalpa, M.D.C.), and colloquially referred to as Tegus or Teguz, is the capital and largest city of Honduras along with its twin sister, Comayagüela.
Claimed on 29 September 1578 ...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_237157" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Soviet POWs covering a mass grave after the Babi Yar massacre, October 1, 1941 © history.kby.kiev.ua - Johannes Hähle[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Babi Yar or Babyn Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing some 33,771 Jews. Other victims of massacre...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_25080" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Turkish Parliament Building © T.C. Büyük Millet Meclisi[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Ankara (historically known with the names Ancyra and Angora) is the capital of Turkey since the Ottoman Empire's fall in 1923 and the country's second largest city, Istanbul being the largest. The city of Ankara has a population of 4,340,000 and its metropolitan municipality 4,960,000.
Centrally located in Anatolia, Ankara is an important commercial and industrial city. It i...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_167663" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Tel Aviv © flickr.com - Smirnova Ksenia/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Israel is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, Palestine (West Bank, (East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. The country contains geographically diverse featu...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_161035" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Kosice2013.sk[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]
The City of Košice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary. With a population of approximately 240,000, Košice is the second largest city in Slovakia after the capital Bratislava. Being the economic and cultural center of eastern Slovakia, Košice is the seat of the Košice Region and Košice Self-govern...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_26634" align="aligncenter" width="590"] historical center © flickr.com - Prefeitura de Olinda/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Olinda is a historic and one of the oldest cities in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, located on the country's northeastern Atlantic Ocean coast, just north of Recife and south of Paulista. It has a population of 397,000 people and is one of the best-preserved colonial cities in Brazil.
Olinda features a number of major touristic attractions, such as a historic downt...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_203336" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Onyo at wts wikivoyage/cc-by-sa-4.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel is a historic luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Caswell-Massey had its flagship store in InterContinental New York Barclay for over 80 years. Caswell-Massey, the oldest chemist and perfumer in America, was the first and oldest tenant of the Barclay. Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Durante, Debbie Reynolds, Ernes...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_205407" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Kontis Šatūnas[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Choral Synagogue of Vilnius in Lithuania is the only synagogue in Vilnius that is still in use. The other synagogues were destroyed partly during World War II, when Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany, and partly by the Soviet authorities after the war.
The Choral Synagogue of Vilnius was built in 1903 in the Romanesque-Moorish style (Moorish Revival architecture).
[gallery size="large" gss="1" ids="2054...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_161170" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Svolvær Harbour © Ernmuhl[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Svolvær is the administrative centre of Vågan Municipality (9,200 inhabitants) in the Nordland County in Lofoten. The town itself has a population of 4,000.
The first town formation known in North Norway, Vågar, was situated around the narrow, natural harbor near Kabelvåg, just west of Svolvær. Vågar is mentioned in Heimskringla, and might have been established as early as 800. One of the first chu...
[ read more ]
