The south of France is known for its idyllic coastal climate, lush vineyards, and charming villages that date back to Roman times.
But for now, the region wants you to think of Paul Cézanne, a Provence native son whose focus on the underlying geometrical shapes of objects and multiple viewpoints within a painting inspired many artists, including Picasso, to call him the father of modern art.
This year, thousands of Europeans (and plenty of Americans) are making the journey to Aix-en-Provence for Cezanne 2025, a regionwide celebration of the French Post-Impressionist that includes his recently renovated estate and studio, the largest assemblage of his masterworks ever shown to the public, and programming through the fall.
The center of these festivities is at the Musée Granet, once an art school where Cézanne studied in the 19th century, which is exhibiting more than 130 paintings, watercolors, and drawings from other museums in Europe, the United States, and Asia.
The works are chronologically arranged, beginning with several drawings, still lifes, and portraits of his parents and famous friends like Émile Zola, often rendered in dark colors reflecting his early Romantic influences. Other rooms contain Cézanne’s scenes of gardens and landscapes around Provence, painted with shorter brush strokes and brighter colors often adopted from Impressionists, before his signature style starts to emerge.
The collection contains several of Cézanne’s most famous works, including nonchalant groups of bathers, vibrant still lifes of sumptuous peaches and apples appearing to roll off their tables, and earthy landscapes of quarries and nearby villages that deeply moved the artist later in his life.
It’s also where you’ll encounter the biggest crowds. Located in Aix’s Mazarin district, the museum is a 15-minute walk from the city’s bus and high-speed train terminals through its historic downtown. The museum doesn’t sell tickets on site — visitors must buy timed tickets in advance online, though they can also be purchased at Aix-en-Provence’s tourist information center up the street from its transit hub.
Afterwards, Cézanne admirers can walk east about 40 minutes toward Jas de Bouffan, the stately mansion that the artist’s father purchased in 1859, which became Cézanne’s home for 40 years and an inspiration for countless landscape scenes and his Card Players series. The house, which features ticketed tours of the interiors, reopened to the public in June.
Other sites are a little further away from the town center, but still worth seeking out. Cezanne’s last artist’s studio, Atelier des Lauves, has been preserved almost exactly as he left it 120 years ago, with his tables, work equipment, and wicker baskets of fruit. It’s about a half-hour walk or bus ride north from the museum.
There’s also the Bibémus quarries and Sainte-Victoire Mountain, Cézanne’s most famous muse and a French national heritage site. The limestone quarry is a 40-minute bus ride from the museum, and much of the area is great for hiking, too. Many of Aix’s buildings and fountains in the Mazarin district are made from stone mined at the quarry.
Finally, consider visiting L’Estaque, a quaint fishing village northeast of Marseille that captivated Cézanne. “It is like a playing card,” he wrote to fellow Impressionist Camille Pissarro in 1876. “Red roofs over the blue sea … The sun is so terrific here that it seems to me as if the objects were silhouetted not only in black and white, but in blue, red, brown, and violet.”
You can look out onto the bay and share the same view Cézanne saw, and perhaps you’ll be inspired to change the course of art history, too.
