April 7, 2019: Immersive Art at Carrières et Lumières and a Ruined Castle at Les Baux de Provence

Today was amazing! Paulette had read about a Van Gogh exhibit on-going at a place called Carrières et Lumières (Stone quarry and light). Carrières is located at Les Baux-de-Provence, an ancient town on the peaks of the Alpilles about 50 km (just over 30 miles) from here.

our destination today

First, we needed food for dinner, so we walked over to the Sarrian market on the Place Jean Jaures. (Well, the group walked and I drove my mobility scooter. Worked great!) It's small this Sunday morning, but there is one producer who has all the veggies and fruits we need, including the famous "fraises de Carpentras".

Dan in front of produce stall

fraises de carpentras

There's also a vendor who has some meats, cheeses, and eggs. We buy a bit of cheese and 2 rotisserie chickens for an easy dinner  to go with the salad things and cauliflower we plan to roast.

Home in less than an hour, we put away our purchases and made sandwiches for the road. We have tickets (purchased online last night) for the 1:30 entrance to the exhibition of "Van Gogh, la nuit étoilée" (Starry night). Paulette had read about this immersive art and music experience which is held in an old stone quarry in Les Baux-de-Provence. So this is our destination for the day.

With 7 people, we took 2 cars for the half hour drive through the Provençal countryside. The day is sunny with fluffy clouds, comfortably warm when the sun is shining on you, but with a cool wind when the sun goes behind a cloud. Most of the way is flat farmland - olive trees, vineyards, fruit trees, the hedgerows of what look to be bamboo and of course, the trees we see in Van Gogh paintings of cypress trees.

A Van Gogh cypress

As we get close to Les Baux, the countryside changes dramatically and becomes dotted with rugged sedimentary rocks through which the road twists and turns.

Rock outcropping in les Alpilles

Reminiscent of the Tour de France, our cars must avoid serious bicyclists, dressed in cycling uniforms, who are climbing the same road we are. These low mountains of rock are called "Les Alpilles"  - the little Alps - and they are impressive in their solidity which contrasts with huge holes where the weather has worn away the limestone.

At a pull-off, we get our first glance of Les Baux-de-Provence, a fortified site for more than 1,000 years. It's strategic advantage is immediately noticeable perched as it is on a craggy mini-Alp.

Les Baux-de-Provence

We continued the windy road into les Baux and find cars parked along the roadside a long distance from the entrance to Les Carrières de Lumières. We drove around a few streets before Dan and Dave eventually found parking places. We perched on quarried stones in the parking area to eat our sandwiches.

The entrance to the exhibit is a 20 foot high by 15 foot wide rectangularly quarried hole into the rocky mountainside. (OK, I have no sense of height - this is way bigger than I described.)

Carrières et lumières

Once inside, the history of this site is clear: it was a stone quarry in a former life (in fact, until 1935 when other building materials like steel and cement made quarrying this stone too expensive to turn a profit and the quarry was closed). Huge rectangular pillars hold up the 20 foot roof of this interior space. The floor is covered in stone dust and occasional outcroppings of bench shaped rock allow about 50 people to sit against the rock walls.

the interior of the stone quarry

And then it begins - each of the pillars, each wall, and at times the ceiling and floor are splashed with images of Van Gogh paintings. But the paintings have elements that move, grow, and morph into other images.

Music in a variety of formats from Janis Joplin to classical sets a mood for each set of images which are themed only by color and subject matter. The effect is magical and transports me outside myself, puts me into the middle of these images. I've never experienced anything like this.

There are hundreds of people in the quarry with us, but somehow, their presence enhances rather than detracts from the effect of this 21st century "son et lumière" (sound and light) show. They are reminders of the scale of the art we are viewing. It takes about 1 hour to view experience the entire set of images, but you feel like you could stay all day. As you wander about the vast interior space, all of which is plastered with these images, you get different perspectives of the artwork.

When we were in Angers in 2017, I visited the Apocalypse Tapestry multiple times, each time soaking in a different part. This is, for me, the 2019 version of the Apocalypse Tapestry. I can't wait to go back again. (Cost is 12 Euros, but I think I'll ask about a pass....)

Once we all met outside the quarry, we drove up the hill to the town of Les Baux. As you may imagine, this site has been used since pre-history due to its advantageous location making it easy to defend.

It was part of the lands owned by the Baux family, who claim to be descendants of Blathazar, one of the Wise Men of Bethlehem. Their symbol is the 6 pointed star of Balthazar. The castle was torn down several times in the middle ages depending on who won the war and who was in power, but in the Renaissance, the town grew and added buildings to shelter about 3,000 townspeople.

remains of the fortress that once crowned the highest point in town

In 1642, the town was given as a thank you for friendship to the Grimaldi family of Monaco. To this day, the title, Count of Baux is given to an heir to the Monaco throne even though the town is entirely on French soil. Today only about 400 people live in the old town and tourism is its only well-deserved industry. Well that, and bauxite - the mineral discovered in 1821 and named after the town.

Cobblestone streets

Place St. Vincent with church behind cross and chapel of the white penitents on the left

the medieval town is now full of tourist shops

upper town Les Baux-de-Provence

It is well-deserving of its status as a Most Beautiful Village of France.

We will surely visit it again. And lessons learned today regarding the scooter: It needs help getting up steep grades and it rattles your teeth over the cobblestones and isn't happy in gravel larger than pea-size. But it worked as it should - I went all the way to the castle at the top of the town and back down again with out any bumps and bruises.  And only a few odd looks. But I was able to visit a medieval village perched on top of a craggy mountain top and it was wonderful.

Clark inspecting a city map

the fantastically carved sedimentary rocks of les Alpilles at the top of Les Baux

Les Alpilles 

We're home now, it's midnight. Once more we had a long, leisurely French dinner, filled with wonderful conversation. So I didn't start this post until after 11. I need to go to bed. Will add photos tomorrow and post.