It's best to visit Aix-en-Provence off-season, forgetting as quickly as possible France's attempt to add the Sainte-Victoire mountain and the places where the painter Cézanne lived to the World Heritage List. In this, I fully agree with Matejicek! I don't understand why Cézanne? Why not Bonnard, Picasso, Matisse, to name just a few of the great French painters? Or Rothko's chapel? The history of painting did not stop with him, and other painters also lived somewhere and left their marks... Unless greed rears starts to show in Aix?

With all the good will in the world, we tried to visit Cézanne's studio: closed for renovation, the Château du Jas de Bouffan (which is actually a big house): closed for work. The Bibemus quarries: by reservation with a guide on another day. We fell back on the Granet Museum where a meager collection of Cézanne's works is exhibited: 10 paintings in total and a few engravings and drawings far from being major works, also closed. Finally we visited the temporary exhibition.

When you're frustrated, the best thing to do is to go for a walk in nature, under the Sainte-Victoire mountain for example, but, although the walk was very pleasant, this mountain has nothing special that could justify any inscription. Its karst relief culminating at 1,011 meters is nothing characteristic, like this one can find hundreds of them elsewhere in Europe and in the world...

We drove the mobile home Wilson up to the "La Maison Sainte-Victoire" interpretation center, where you …

From this serial nomination, I visited the atelier of Paul Cezanne not far from the historical center of Aix-en-Provence, and also climbed the Montagne Sainte-Victoire (photo), in July 2011. The mountain is really impresive, and no wonder that it was a favourite subject of Cezanne. It is formed by a massive limestone rock covered by typical mediterraen vegetation with the iron cross on the top. The atelier of Cezanne was quite a touristy place, and you can visit it in the former house of Cezanne surrounded by rather neglected garden (in 2011).

Though I enjoyed my trip to the summit of Montagne Sainte-Victoire and love works of Cezanne, I cannot see any OUV here. The nomination text is a bit confusing to me with quite a broad target spanning from dinosaur eggs to Cezanne, and the main reason for inscription is to protect the sites against the tourist industry. I guess it has no chance to enter the list.

However, I would strongly recommend visiting historic center of Aix that is stuffed by very nice monuments such as cathedral. Aix is not far from Marseille and it is worth-visiting even in the case you do not like both modern art and climbing limestone cliffs.