Weekly Column: Not Fancy, Just Idyllic

Ultimately, the leaders of cities must reckon with the reality that the places where people enjoy living must be more than steel, asphalt and concrete.

There is an intangible component that plays an important role in creating what is sometimes called “a sense of place.” And sometimes there are ways that a small-to-midsize city can be just the right size to create that special sense.

Luke Barr captures that special quality in a well-written piece about Aix-en-Provence (population 141,000) in the south of France.

But his words describe the kind of place most people would love to call “home” anywhere in the world.

Barr writes, “. . . the town pulls you toward its heart, its grand central street, the Cours Mirabeau. With two tall rows of plane trees and a series of fountains and cafés, it makes you slow down and exhale. M.F. [celebrated writer, M.F.K. Fisher] described the Cours this way: ‘It is a man-made miracle, perhaps indescribable, compounded of stone and water and trees, and to the fortunate it is one of the world’s chosen spots for their own sentient growth.’”

Barr ate dinner at the famous café on the Cours, Les Deux Garcons, “never a place one came for the food, but rather for the ambience” – a place built in 1792 which counted among its guests Cézanne, Zola and Hemingway.

But for a place to really be “home” requires more than a walkable, friendly, tree-lined main street and a popular café – and Barr revealed there is more.

There was “a routine, a rhythm, a kind of easygoing daily schedule . . . The main event was the farmers’ market in downtown Aix. On the Place Richelme, under the shade of a canopy of tall plane trees, this was a farmers’ market to end all farmers’ markets. Not that it was very big, or particularly fancy, but it was idyllic; the market was busy from early morning until just after lunch . . . "

There are also the inanimate landmarks that somehow acquire an endearing personality. For Barr it was “the fountain of the Four Dolphins . . . our family favorite . . . the fountain consisted of four stone dolphins, smiling and cheerful but each with a slightly different expression, spouting thin streams of water . . .”

Berr’s father remembered the fountain from when he was 13, and “here it was, 50 years later, and still wonderful.”

A street, a café, a market and a fountain – together they transcended asphalt and concrete to create a sense of place.

Travel and Leisure, April 2009, p. 144, “At Home in Provence”