Introduction to Aix-en-Provence. A rchitecture bears the stamp of its orgins expressing the spirit and matter prevailing at the time of its creation. Superhighways split elegant domains in two, the T. Visitors come, however, not to bewail the conflict, but to celebrate the truce between man and nature, landscape and manscape. Springs, some thermal, emerge at the natural crossroads below known to shepherds, merchants, and travellers on their way north, south, east, and west from time immemorial.
Celto-Ligurian military and civil architecture dating from the fourth century B. The conscientious thoroughness with which the Romans applied their recipe for "peace through deletion" has left intact and visible more of Entremont today than have the generations that have succeeded the thriving Roman castrum and colonia on whose site Aix now stands.
Our present concern, however is with Aix-en-Provence, ancient archbishopric and capital. Neglect and abandonment are probably less responsible for the disappearance of Roman monuments and historic buildings than periodic prosperity that spurs present ambition and knows no scruples in exploiting elements that have been quarried from an earlier age. The cathedral baptistry, for example, happily combines fifth century foundations with columns "borrowed" from a Roman temple or basilica, and a sixteenth century cupola.
Contemporary with the central nave, but combining baroque, neoclassic, and mediaeval architecture in bewildering propinquity, this nave is a jewel for the student of art history, a nightmare for the purist.
Architecture in Aix-en-Provence.
