Musée départmental Arles Antiques.

 

Known locally for the most obvious of reasons as "The Blue Museum" this museum, situated at the east end of the town, a good walk beyond the AutoRoute bridge across the Rhône, is an extraordinary place. Externally, it must be the winner of the ugliest modern building in Arles. Believe me, there is competition for that particular prize. Inside you will find one of the best presented collections of art and archaeology you will ever see. The tour begins with the pre-roman stuff which can be pretty boring (there is very little other than the sort of fanciful miniature reconstruction of mud huts much beloved of French museums). If you walk quickly through all that you come across one of the most entrancing collection of Roman art. The great jewels of the collection are the sarcophagi - the best collection outside Rome in spite of the Louvre in Paris pinching a number of seminal pieces. But here are also mosaic floors, amphora, lead plumbing pipes, lead weights for measuring food, wine and olive oil, jewels and hair pins, tiny domestic items and funerary plaques and tombstones, excellent and honest reconstructions and models of Roman Arles, the great horseshoe-shaped circus that once sat more than 25,000 people, (at whose turn the museum is situated), the original Théatre antique (unlike the 19th century pastiche that you will be charged money to see “in real life” on the Hauteur), and the great Arena. They reconstruct the necropoli that were the sources for many of the great sarcophagi. They show how Tranquetaille, the suburb to the north of the river across the bridge where the Romans originally settled is consequently where most of the stuff was discovered. It floods less that the south bank - the Romans were no fools.

 

This is a great museum and infinitely worth some of your holiday time. If you are fortunate to be in Arles on the first Sunday of the month, entrance is free (in common with a number of Arles museums) and if you go in the afternoon you can see (unless things have changed recently) the glorious sight of Arlesian children whose parents can’t afford to pay the usual entrance fee running around like dervishes, shouting their heads off, occasionally climbing on the sarcophagi to have their photos taken (shoes removed, of course). This is what art museums should be about. Hopefully when they grow up these children won’t think of a museum as an enemy.

 

Additional recent notoriety has been given to the museum by the discovery of a beautiful portrait head of Julius Caesar by divers in the river Rhône. There are debates both about its authenticity and its identification, but is a striking piece as are some of the other pieces dug up from the river bed and almost worth the visit on their own as these more recent discoveries have been given a new room to themselves. Another recent addition is an extension to house an almost complete Roman barge complete with its original cargo of stone that has recently been painstakingly raised from its peaceful retirement in the mud on the bed of the river.

 

  Go and visit, please!

 

A note. This museum seems to be renamed more often than that great Arlesian, Christian Lacroix, brings out a new collection. Please persevere. The word “antique” should appear in the title somewhere in spite of yet another probable new politically correct re-branding!

 

On your way to the museum you will pass a recently established formal “Roman Garden”. As the place is still fairly young, the jury should be “out” at this point. I am personally a little uncertain about this addition to the Roman experience of Arles. There seems to be a creeping “hollywoodisation” going on with Roman costume parades, re-enactments of gladiatorial contests, Roman film shows (whatever they are) – all various forms of artifice designed to bring more tourists into the town, and as such probably good for a very poor community. The examples of Aigues Morte and Carcasonne show how artificial these things can make a place if taken too far. However there are very few open green spaces in Arles and the town should be applauded for creating one. At weekends it is full of kids and their parents having fun on the rather formal lawn and this is a sight that warms the heart of even an old curmudgeon like Smith.