50 Fun Facts About Provence

Which sea borders Provence to the south?

The Mediterranean washes Provence's whole southern edge, and its eastern shore got the name Côte d'Azur from an 1887 travel book by the writer Stéphen Liégeard.

Marseille holds which distinction among French cities?

It is the oldest city in France: Marseille began around 600 BC as the port of Massalia, and builders digging a shopping centre in 1967 unearthed remains of that ancient harbour.

Provence owes its name to being Rome's first 'provincia' beyond which mountains?

The Alps were the barrier: Romans called their first province beyond them simply 'Provincia', or 'our province', and the nickname outlived the official name, Gallia Narbonensis.

Sailors from which ancient people founded Marseille as the trading post Massalia around 600 BC?

The Greeks came from Phocaea in Asia Minor, hence Marseille's nickname, the Phocaean City; when Persia besieged Phocaea, most of its people chose exile over surrender.

Pytheas, a navigator from ancient Marseille, explored which island over 2,300 years ago and reported the midnight sun farther north?

Great Britain was the heart of his voyage: Pytheas estimated its coastline and tied the tides to the moon, yet the geographer Strabo later branded him an arch-liar.

Which Provençal hill town is known as the world's perfume capital?

Grasse got there by smell: its medieval tanneries stank, so its glove-makers began scenting their leather and in time became perfumers.

Gaius Marius, who crushed the invading Teutons in Provence in 102 BC, was the uncle by marriage of which Roman?

Julius Caesar was the nephew of Marius's wife Julia; in that battle Marius hid 3,000 men in wooded ravines to fall on the Teutons from behind.

The Pont du Gard aqueduct bridge carried water to which Roman city?

Nîmes was its goal: the Pont du Gard carried an aqueduct almost 50 km long, and the position codes Roman builders cut into its blocks can still be read.

How is the painted Cosquer Cave near Marseille entered?

Through a passage 37 metres under the sea: Ice Age painters walked in on dry land, but the sea later rose over the entrance and hid the cave until diver Henri Cosquer found it.

Provence's flag carries the same red and gold stripes as which Spanish region, whose counts ruled it in the 12th century?

Catalonia's counts of Barcelona gained Provence when its heiress Douce married Ramon Berenguer III, and the striped arms the two lands shared still fly over Provence.

Clement V, the pope who moved to Provence, dissolved which crusading order?

The Knights Templar were suppressed in 1312 after France's King Philip IV had them arrested and pressed Clement to act; much of their wealth then passed to the rival Hospitallers.

Which biblical episode nicknamed the popes' stay in Provence?

The Babylonian Captivity was the taunt: all seven popes of the period were French, and the poet Petrarch, who lived in the papal city, called it the Babylon of the West.

In the 14th century, seven popes in a row ruled the Church not from Rome but from which Provençal city?

Avignon was the papal capital from 1309 to 1377, and its fortress-like Palais des Papes still stands, though after the Revolution it spent decades as an army barracks.

Which Italian city did Provence's "Good King René" rule as king before Aragon drove him out in 1442?

Naples was his for seven years until Alfonso of Aragon took it; back in Provence he gave himself to poetry, painting and the patronage of artists, and the nickname followed.

Which British author's 1989 memoir A Year in Provence became an international bestseller?

Peter Mayle, a former advertising man, moved to the Luberon meaning to write a novel, but his account of settling into village life overtook it and sold around the world.

The town of Orange in Provence gave its name to which country's royal house?

The Netherlands' house of Orange-Nassau took the name when William the Silent inherited the tiny principality in 1544, aged 11; the town's Roman name, Arausio, has nothing to do with the fruit.

Which disease reached Marseille on a merchant ship in 1720 and killed tens of thousands across Provence?

Plague came ashore from the Grand-Saint-Antoine, whose silk and cotton were wanted for a great trade fair; quarantine rules were bent, probably to save the cargo, and the city paid for it.

La Marseillaise was written in Strasbourg, so why is it named after Marseille?

Volunteers from Marseille sang it in Paris after marching north in 1792; Rouget de Lisle, an army engineer, had written it in a single night as a war song for the Army of the Rhine.

Which young artillery commander drove the British out of Provence's great naval port in December 1793?

Napoleon Bonaparte, then a captain, planned the capture of the forts above the anchorage, took a bayonet in the thigh, and was made a brigadier general days later at 24.

France gained Nice and Savoy in 1860 for helping to unify which country?

Italy's unification cost it Nice: Piedmont handed the city and Savoy to France for its help against Austria, over the protests of Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was born in Nice.

What is the cold, dry north wind that sweeps through Provence called?

The mistral can blow for days but leaves the sky swept clear, and it shaped the houses: a traditional Provençal farmhouse faces south and turns a windowless wall to the north.

Which mountain, nicknamed the Giant of Provence, is one of the Tour de France's hardest climbs?

Mont Ventoux stands alone, far higher than anything around it, and the poet Petrarch wrote that he climbed it in 1336 for no reason but to see the view.

Which mountain near Aix did Paul Cézanne paint again and again?

Montagne Sainte-Victoire held him to the end: in October 1906 Cézanne was caught in a storm while painting outdoors, collapsed on the way home, and died of pneumonia days later.

The Camargue, a marshy delta known for white horses and flamingos, is formed by which river?

The Rhône splits into two arms as it nears the sea, and the Camargue is the wedge of marsh and salt lagoon caught between them, grazed by black bulls bred for Provençal bullfights.

What are the narrow rocky inlets between Marseille and Cassis called?

Calanques began as steep dry valleys cut into white limestone and became inlets only when the rising sea flooded their lower ends.

Which Provençal river carved a limestone gorge nicknamed France's "Grand Canyon"?

The Verdon leaves its canyon through the Lac de Sainte-Croix, a reservoir filled in the 1970s that drowned the old village of Les Salles, rebuilt higher up the shore.

In 1942 the French fleet scuttled itself in which Provençal naval port rather than fall into German hands?

Toulon's crews wrecked their own ships at their moorings on 27 November 1942 as German troops broke into the base; Admiral de Laborde had the orders ready for exactly that.

Which low, aromatic scrubland is typical of Provence's dry limestone hills?

Garrigue is a man-made landscape: it took over the limestone hills after their oak forests were cut, burned and grazed away, leaving thyme, rosemary and lavender.

Vincent van Gogh lived in which Provençal town from February 1888 to May 1889?

Arles is where he rented the Yellow House hoping to found an artists' colony; only Gauguin came, and their weeks together ended with Van Gogh cutting off part of his own ear.

Which artist spent his last twelve years at Mougins, in the hills above Cannes, and died there in 1973?

Pablo Picasso died at 91 in his farmhouse at Mougins and was buried at Vauvenargues, the château near Aix that he had bought in 1958.

Which Provençal poet, leader of the Félibrige revival, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904?

Frédéric Mistral shared the 1904 prize with a Spanish dramatist and spent his half on the Museon Arlaten, the museum of Provençal folk life he had founded a few years earlier.

Provençal is a dialect of which language?

Occitan is the old langue d'oc, named for its word for yes, 'oc', where northern French said 'oïl', the ancestor of 'oui'; the Languedoc region still carries the name.

Which Aubagne-born author of La Gloire de mon Père was the first filmmaker in the Académie Française?

Marcel Pagnol worked backwards on his best-known story: he filmed Manon of the Spring in 1952, then turned his own film into the two-part novel that opens with Jean de Florette.

Which French queen consulted the seer Nostradamus and visited him at his home in Salon-de-Provence in 1564?

Catherine de' Medici stopped at Salon on a royal tour with her young son Charles IX, and Nostradamus came away with the title of physician and counsellor to the king.

The Lumière brothers filmed their arriving train at which Provençal station?

La Ciotat was where the Lumière family spent its summers, which is how its small station came to star in one of the first films; the tale of viewers fleeing the oncoming engine is now counted a legend.

What is the classic seafood dish of Marseille?

Bouillabaisse began as a poor man's supper: Marseille's fishermen boiled up the bony rockfish they could not sell, and the scorpionfish called rascasse is still essential to it.

Which Provençal city gave the world ratatouille?

Nice counts ratatouille as its signature dish: peasant cooking born of surplus summer vegetables, later raised to fine dining and to the title of a 2007 Pixar film.

What is tapenade made from?

Olives, capers and olive oil are the base, yet the capers named it: tapenade comes from tapeno, the Provençal word for caper, even though the olives do most of the work.

The "four beggars" among Provence's thirteen Christmas desserts stand for four what?

Kinds of friar: the nuts and dried fruit stand for the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Carmelites, all vowed to poverty, and with nine more dishes they make thirteen, for Jesus and the apostles.

What colour is most of the wine produced in Provence?

Rosé makes up more than half of Provence's wine; it comes from red grapes whose skins are left in the juice for only a matter of hours, just long enough to tint it pink.

Which insect is the emblem of Provence, sold everywhere as a glazed ceramic wall ornament?

The cicada took on the role after 1895, when the Aubagne potter Louis Sicard modelled the first one in glazed earthenware; its summer rasp is the sound of the Provençal pine woods.

Which Marseille wine merchant's son launched his own-name pastis in 1932?

Paul Ricard wanted to be a painter, but his father put him into the family wine business; when France eased its ban on anise spirits in 1932, he was ready with a recipe he sold as the true pastis of Marseille.

Calissons, the almond-and-candied-melon sweets, are traditionally associated with which town?

Aix-en-Provence has made the calisson its own; a popular legend, never proven, says the sweet was first served at King René's wedding in 1454 to please his young queen.

Pétanque was devised so that a veteran jeu provençal player could keep playing despite which ailment?

Rheumatism stopped him making the running throw, so the game was reworked for players standing still in a small circle, and the Provençal for 'foot planted', petanco, gave pétanque its name.

What is the small target ball in pétanque called?

The cochonnet, French for 'piglet', is the jack every boule is aimed at; a team beaten without scoring a point must by custom kiss the bare bottom of 'Fanny', a picture kept at the ground.

The Château d'If off Marseille is famous as a setting of which novel?

The Count of Monte Cristo drew so many readers to the island that a 'cell of Edmond Dantès' was fitted out for them to visit, though its prisoner never existed.

Which Marseille church, known locally as "la Bonne Mère", overlooks the old port?

Notre-Dame de la Garde stands on a limestone peak on the base of an old fort; in August 1944 French troops stormed the German blockhouses on its hill, and shell scars from the fight still mark its walls.

Which Provençal Cistercian abbey near Gordes, founded in 1148, is famous for its lavender fields?

Sénanque was sold as state property at the Revolution, but its buyer left the 12th-century buildings standing, and a new community of monks moved back in during the 1850s.

Which Impressionist settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1907 and painted there until his death?

Auguste Renoir went south for the warmth after arthritis set in, and at his hillside farm, Les Collettes, he kept painting even as the disease crippled his hands.

The Avignon Festival, founded in 1947, is best known for which art form?

Theatre was the whole programme at the start: in September 1947 Jean Vilar staged three new productions in a single 'week of dramatic art', which grew into the July festival of today.