7 Best Sights in Provence, France

St-Rémy is wrapped by a lively commercial boulevard, lined with shops and cafés and anchored by its 19th-century church Collégiale St-Martin. Step inside—if the main door is locked, the side door is always open—to see the magnificent 5,000-pipe modern organ, one of the loveliest in Europe. Rebuilt to 18th-century specifications in the early 1980s, it has the flexibility to interpret new and old music with pure French panache; you can listen for free on weekends mid-April–September.

A slick visitor center prepares you for entry into the ancient village of Glanum, with scale models of the site in its various heydays. A good map and an English brochure guide you stone by stone through the maze of foundations, walls, towers, and columns that spread across a broad field; helpfully, Greek sites are denoted by numbers, Roman ones by letters. Note that Glanum is across the street from Les Antiques and set back from the D5, and the only parking is in a dusty roadside lot on the D5 south of town (in the direction of Les Baux). In addition, hours vary, so check ahead.

Make your way to the Hôtel de Sade, a 15th- and 16th-century private manor now housing the treasures unearthed from the ruins of Glanum. The de Sade family built the house around remains of 4th-century baths and a 5th-century baptistery, now nestled in its courtyard.

Two of the most miraculously preserved classical monuments in France are simply called Les Antiques. Dating from 30 BC, the Mausolée (Mausoleum), a wedding-cake stack of arches and columns, lacks nothing but a finial on top and is dedicated to a Julian, probably Caesar Augustus. A few yards away stands the Arc Triomphal, dating from AD 20. A lovely spot for a stroll and within easy walking distance from the city center, the site is open during the day and at night—when it's handsomely illuminated.

The 18th-century Hôtel Estrine now houses this museum, which contains many reproductions of van Gogh's work (along with letters to his brother, Theo) and hosts exhibitions of contemporary art, much of it inspired by Vincent. It also has a permanent collection dedicated to the father of Cubism, Albert Gleizes, who lived in St-Rémy for the last 15 years of his life.

This is the isolated asylum where van Gogh spent the last year of his life (1889–90). Enter quietly: the hospital shelters psychiatric patients to this day, all of them women. You're free to walk up the beautifully manicured garden path to the church and its jewel-box Romanesque cloister, where the artist found womblike peace.

Within St-Rémy's fast-moving traffic loop, a labyrinth of narrow streets leads you away from the action and into the slow-moving inner sanctum of the Vieille Ville. Here trendy, high-end shops mingle pleasantly with local life, and the buildings, if gentrified, blend in unobtrusively.