Paul Cézanne’s artistic muse had sweeping shoulders, an enigmatic face and majestic beauty that loomed over his life’s work. But that obsession was a mountain, not a woman. Seduced by the sun’s chameleon-like effect on its limestone ridges, Cézanne painted more than 80 versions of Montagne Ste.-Victoire, a granite massif near his hometown, the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence.
Aix is where Cézanne (1839-1906) was born and first put brush to palette. It’s where he painted many of his masterpieces, and it’s where he died. This year, from June to October, the city is honoring that legacy with a series of events linked to the reopening on June 28 of both the renovated Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, the artist’s 18th-century family manor, and the Atelier des Lauves, his last workshop. This celebration, Cézanne 2025, made Aix one of The New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2025 and will bring up to 400,000 more visitors to a city that’s already a prime summer destination. Key sites will be open only for guided visits, so reserve ahead.
This outpouring of admiration would have never happened a century ago. The Aixois generally derided the painter during his lifetime: The Impressionists aimed to please with their pretty palette. The Post-Impressionist Cézanne shocked with his bold colors and geometric forms. “It takes time to like Cézanne because he is more complex than you realize,” said Bruno Ely, director of the Musée Granet, which will present the largest collection of Cézanne’s work to date as part of Cézanne 2025.
I could say the same thing about my rapport with Aix. Compared with its boisterous neighbor Marseille, my own hometown, the postcard-perfect destination always felt like a cliché. But an early-spring visit to Aix inspired me to dig deeper, and I found a new appreciation for both Cézanne and the city.
Garlic Soup and a Glass Sidewalk
The old town of Aix-en-Provence is one of the most beautiful in France, with cobblestone streets, elegant facades and sun-dappled terraces that are perfect for sipping rosé. The hundreds of gurgling fountains nod to its founding as a Roman colony, Aquae Sextiae, for its thermal waters. Many of the exquisitely preserved buildings date back to the Middle Ages and Aix’s reign as the capital of Provence. The medieval city flourished, becoming a hub of art, justice and education, with the founding of its still-operating university in 1409.
Cézanne’s story is woven through the pedestrian-friendly streets of the old town. To explore, I downloaded Sur les Pas de Cézanne (In Cézanne’s Footsteps), a self-guided walking tour, which included the grand St.-Sauveur Cathedral, an eclectic smorgasbord of Baroque, Gothic and Romanesque styles seven centuries in the making, where Cézanne attended Sunday Mass.
Just a few blocks southeast of the church, Cézanne’s last apartment sits steps from the newly opened Las Galinas, which is offering a three-course menu (35 euros, or about $40) that includes a local delicacy, aïgo boulido, or garlic soup. It is one of more than two dozen Provençal restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Bastide Bourrelly, getting in on the Cézanne fervor by featuring menus inspired by the painter.
In the nearby Place Richelme, I browsed the local produce — finding early-season tomatoes — at one of Aix’s many farmers’ markets and then wandered over to the Palais de Justice, to gaze at the ruins of the 13th-century Palais Comtale beneath a glass sidewalk. Across the Place des Prêcheurs, I spotted the Madeleine church, where Cézanne was baptized.
South of the Palais de Justice, I followed the narrow Passage Agard, which sliced through the cloisters of an ancient convent, leading to the Cours Mirabeau, a stately, tree-lined boulevard whose elegant cafes Cézanne frequented. I could almost see the horse-drawn carriages rolling past the belle-epoque-style cafe Le Grillon.
The nearby Mazarin District was a bourgeois bastion in the 17th century. The honey-hued stones of its sumptuous mansions came from the nearby quarries whose pigments inspired Cézanne. One mansion now houses the contemporary art space Gallifet, whose “Echos de Cézanne” show will bring together emerging and well-known artists inspired by Cézanne starting on July 1. Another is home to the Maison du Collectionneur guesthouse (rooms from €200), which faces the school turned museum where Cézanne got his first paintbrush wet.
A Lost Work Revealed
“In my lifetime, no Cézanne will enter,” proclaimed Henri Pontier, the curator of what is now the Musée Granet, in 1900, echoing the ambivalence Aix held toward the artist who would become its most famous son. He kept that promise: Pontier died in 1926, and the museum did not acquire a Cézanne until 1984. Decades later, the museum is at the center of Cézanne 2025. In “Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan” (€18, opening June 28) the museum will exhibit a whopping 133 paintings, drawings and watercolors on loan from 75 institutions around the world.
The exhibition’s common thread is the Jas de Bouffan country estate, just west of the old town, bought by Cézanne’s banker father in 1859 as a bucolic retreat. The manor became Cézanne’s center of gravity. He used its living room walls as his canvases for 40 years, and the estate is where he found farmworkers to serve as models for “The Card Players” and began his obsessive study of the human form, resulting in more than 200 works like “Baigneuses et Baigneurs,” or “The Bathers.”
The paintings on the wall panels were meticulously removed by scalpel after the family sold the estate in 1899, but Cézanne 2025 will bring them back by projecting images of them onto the walls. Visitors will also be able to see one work that never left: the previously unknown and painstakingly restored “L’Entrée de Port.” Visits to the Jas de Bouffan estate will be only through 18-person guided tours (€9.50) until 2026; reserve well in advance.
A Palette and a Favorite Perch
The newly renovated Atelier des Lauves is worth the 20-minute walk uphill from town on the avenue now named for the artist. Cézanne built the golden villa in 1901 to house his studio, and he died there in 1906. Reserve ahead for a guided tour of the studio and its verdant garden (€9.50, opens June 28).
During my stroll though the 538-square-foot space, light streamed through a wall of windows onto Cézanne’s last palette. The shelves were stocked with the tableware depicted in his famous still lifes. Cézanne created 50-something paintings at Lauves, including “Le Jardinier Vallier,” just before his death.
Cézanne chose the studio’s location for its proximity — a 10-minute walk — to one of his favorite painting perches, the Jardin des Peintres, a terraced garden where, on my visit, eight easels showed reproductions of his Montagne Ste.-Victoire paintings. My eyes ping-ponged from painting to the mountain in the distance. I could almost feel Cézanne’s brush in my hand. Free to visit, the Jardin des Peintres hosts a Provençal aperitif (€45) on Wednesday evenings in the summer.
Climb Into the Paintings
The Bibemus Quarries — a mosaic of fragrant pines, Provençal-blue skies and rocks in infinite ochers about four miles east of the old town — offer a front-row seat to Cézanne’s pigment prowess. “Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else — by color,” said my guide, Cécile Corellou, 59, quoting the painter as we ambled through the awe-inspiring copper cliffs that so seduced him — I could have climbed into the photo of “Carrière de Bibemus” she showed me. Note that the quarry is accessible only by tourist-office-run tours (€17).
To get close to Cézanne’s mountain muse, take a tour of La Route Cézanne, which winds along the southern side of the mountain and is staggeringly beautiful when bathed in the setting sun. You can join a three-hour e-bike tour (€220 for up to 12 people, plus €36 bike rental per person) with Secrets d’Ici, or take a hike. The popular Sentier Imoucha trek departs from the north face near the fairy-tale Château de Vauvenargues, the final resting place of Picasso, who boasted that he had bought Cézanne’s mountain.
The Imoucha hike sets off from behind the Barrage de Bimont dam — its blindingly turquoise waters flow from the algae-rich Gorges du Verdon. A thigh-thumper of a climb up limestone dotted with rosemary and thyme leads to the 60-foot-tall Croix de Provence, erected near the summit by a local vicar to ward off evil (three and a half hours round-trip.) Just below, the 17th-century Ste.-Victoire Priory, topped by a rare pregnant Virgin Mary, is a lovely place for a picnic with a view.
Admiring the landscape from 3,103 feet on Montagne Ste.-Victoire, I realized I had swapped perspectives: I was no longer viewing the mountain as Cézanne did, but looking from the mountain toward where Cézanne would have stood with his brush, palette and easel. It all reminded me of a famous line from “La Prisonnière,” by Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
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