We’ve been waiting for a rain day to visit the Tapestry Museum, but it hasn’t happened yet, so today decide to go for it anyway. The building the museum is in was once the Palais de L’Archeveche (Palais of the Archbishop) and is adjacent to the Cathedral. The archbishops held considerable wealth and rank within the church. Attributed to the architect Laurent Vallon around 1670, he designs homes befitting the social status of its residents and this one is special.
The Museum itself hosts some magnificent tapestries from the 16th and 17th centuries. It also houses old costumes from ballets and operas from the 17th and 18th centuries. You can still see that it was a very palatial private residence at one time.
Afterwards we explore more streets in the ‘old town’ that we haven’t been down before. I have lost count of the number of fountains that are in this town. We have a small break at ‘Le Unic’, people watching and observing workers take down the daily morning market and bring in tables for the restaurants. Quite the interesting process with an army of street sweepers cleaning up the market debris. It reminds Dick of the sweeper at the end of the ‘Mr. Peabody and Sherman’ parade.
We have dinner booked at L’Incontournable, a recommendation from Pierre of Prestige Wine Tours in Chateauneuf-de-pope. His parents live in Aix and they frequent this place. The restaurant siting is situated in the ‘Place et Fontaine Des 3 Ormeaux’, a small square with the requisite fountain. Dinner is a lovely experience, starting with a beautiful heirloom tomato salad, followed by a veal dish for me and breast of duck for Dick. Dessert is the house specialty – a layered pastry, fresh strawberry and mint infused whipped cream thing. Too much food. We had a lovely 2011 Chateau de Beaupre red wine with dinner.
Things finally cooled off a little for the walk home.
M.
We’ve been exploring Aix for a while now and still find ourselves stumbling across hidden alleys, squares, & fountains every day. The city has a nickname of ‘the city of a thousand fountains’. I doubt there’s that many, but there are quite a few and they are everywhere!
A short walk today took us to the interesting ‘Palais de L’Archeveche’ where the city has housed its tapestry museum and a special exhibit called ‘51’. As Mary noted, the tapestries are beautiful and date back to the 1500 & 1600’s. Most were made by the acclaimed weavers in Flanders. The ‘51’ exhibit is what I would call ‘French Weird’. As the brochure and exhibit labels were all in French it was hard to understand what (if any) the theme of the collection was – among other stuff were displays on amoebas, wild boars, parrots, & forests.
Further wanderings took us past ‘Christophe Madeleines’ to replenish stock. Actually, it might more have been a targeted route rather than ‘wandering’. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever had ‘madeleines’ before this trip and they are special! A little further along is an interesting craft beer joint that recently opened called ‘Aquae Maltae’. They specialize in local craft beer (Aix & surrounding region) and have a line of beers brewed by what they call their ‘Gypsy Brewers’ who do collaborations with other local outfits. Some purchases were made for research purposes. One I declined to try was an ‘Olive Lager’. Geez.
Incredibly, Aix has 768 restaurants listed in Trip Advisor and every street, alley, courtyard, and fountain has at least a few. Based on a recommendation Mary scored a table at L’Incontournable, located in a tiny square (with requisite fountain) in the old city. Good pick – great food, ambiance and service.
D.
