​The Hôtel de Dieu

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The Hotel de Dieu was Arles main hospital constructed in the 16th and 17th centuries.  The fine, five - storied, quadrangular building famously played host, very briefly, to Van Gogh during one of his more difficult medical moments - but probably not immediately after the ear cutting episode which is almost certainly a nice amalgamation of two stories for marketing purposes.  He did however paint his famous Jardin de l'Hôpital en Arles which shows the formal set out of the square garden.  This garden and the building that surrounds it are planted and cultivates each year so that they resemble the painting with fervent accuracy.  Just in case you miss the connection, the entire building that now contains the town library, various academic and administrative offices and exhibition spaces has been renamed L’Espace Van Gogh for good measure. Of course, the scene has been enhanced by an oversize ceramic reproduction of the painting in question.

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The Langlois Bridge

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At least ten versions of Van Gogh’s famous painting of this bridge exist and you can visit the bridge at its present location some five kilometres south of the town on the road to Mas Thibert and Salin-de-Giraud.  It is a good half hours stiff walk from the Arena. There is a bus.  Some busses on the No.1 line (Trebon / Barriol) go (near) there but check the timetable if you want to get back the same day! Unfortunately, the original bridge was originally located further down the canal between Arles and Port de Bouc.  It is uncertain where exactly was the bridge that was van Gogh’s subject because a series of eleven identical bridges had been built to span the canal and Van Gogh was never completely reliable when it came to recording local topography.  They all fell into disrepair and were replaced by more prosaically concrete ones as the canal was no longer used.  This last wooden one was “reconstructed” nearer the town for the sake of the tourists in 1962 and, of course, christened Le Pont Van Gogh.  Langlois was actually the name of the bridge’s keeper not the place it stands.  Van Gogh himself called the bridge Le Pont de l’Anglais, presumably misunderstanding the man’s name.

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Café Terrace

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If you do like life imitating art then I can do no better than to recommend an eye-wateringly expensive coffee (or more for dreadful food if you have a gold card) at the so-called Café de la Nuit on the Place du Forum.  Please note that this is definitely not a gastronomic recommendation.  This café, immortalised in Van Gogh’s painting Café Terrace of 1889, is repainted almost every year in order to try to make it look more and more like the original, nocturnal, gas-lit muck yellow building of the famous picture.  It might be noted that the yellow was the gas light not the building which was, in fact, white. Whether or not this operation is a success in a matter of personal opinion but they certainly have succeeded in making the café look during the daytime as if someone has been sick all over it.  (The immediately neighbouring Café Tambourin is a much better and less extravagant place to take a coffee or a Pastis.  DO NOT EAT on the Place du Forum.  

   

The Yellow House

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          In the summer of 1944, the American air force decided to preface their army’s occupation of the South of France with series of  bombing raids, ostensibly to destroy the railway bridges across the Rhône and various other strategic targets.  One of their targets was the rail bridge in Arles between the present bus and train station and Tranquetaille across the river.  It was considered to be a prime route for potential German troop withdrawals from the territory to the west of the river. Owing to their propensity for bombing from high altitude in spite of the fact that Arles has no anti-aircraft defences, (few Germans either by that time) the bombing was less than precise and cut a great swathe through Arles in a north-north east direction starting south east of the Place de la Major (and Smith's house), taking in a side of the Arena and finishing in Tranquetaille across the river thus reducing a major part of an erstwhile beautiful town to rubble, for reasons that still mystify slightly. There is a scurrilous rumour in the town’s folk law that the Americans were actually intending to bomb the much more important rail crossing at Avignon and made a mistake having seen a river and a bridge from a great height.  To be fair, given that Avignon was liberated exactly a month later after similarly intensive bombing this would seem to be unlikely. But ...

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          They “got” the bridge finally after numerous attempts - although it is difficult to see the strategic value of the single track line that went only to Stes. Maries de la Mer on the Camargue and Nîmes, a direction very different from that in which the occupying Germans were already withdrawing.  They also “got” Van Gogh’s famous little Yellow House on the north side of what is now the Place Lamartine.  It exists only as dust and memories. 

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The van Gogh Foundation

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Oh dear. This used to housed in a thoroughly pseudo Italianate but nevertheless imposing building (the so-called Palais Luppé) to the west of the Amphitheatre. However it is now relocated (courtesy of our own local pharmaceutical billionairess) to the old Banque de France building on the Rue du Docteur Fanton. The ancient and faintly fortified facade of  15th century Hôtel Léautaud de Donines has been torn off in an act of institutional vandalism and replaced by a huge plate glass window that make the place look like an airport lavatory. Nevertheless it houses the utterly misnamed Fondation van Gogh de la Ville d’Arles.

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There is a substantial charge to get in (€108 or more when there is a special show) so I have no reservations about telling you that you NOT usually find any van Gogh works inside. There were a few (including the Yellow House) for the opening exhibition that finished on 31st August 2014. As mentioned before in this guide, there are none normally resident in Arles. What you will find (when other contemporary art shows are not taking up the wall space) is a collection of works “inspired by van Gogh”. The collection is pretty mediocre – dreadful, is a better word, in my view – and should only be visited by people who might be interested in seeing arguably the worst Francis ever painted. Visit only if it is raining and you are desperate for something to do. Recent information is that the Bacon might be reclaimed by those in the UK who wish to own these things. This will be a relief and ironically might improve the collection by leaving it. What is going to befall the Palais Luppé remains to be seen.

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The Foundation’s activities remain a mystery and, apart from a rather poignant opening exhibition when a few paintings by the master were allowed temporarily to return to the city of their birth, it continues to house art “inspired” by the memory of van Gogh. Judging by what is exhibited, that memory is fading faster that the passage on time since the artist’s death might suggest.