Les Antiques
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St-Remy

About 1.5km south of the old town, following avenue Vincent-Van-Gogh past the tourist office, you'll come to Les Antiques (free access), a triumphal arch supposedly celebrating the Roman conquest of Marseille, and a mausoleum thought to commemorate two grandsons of Augustus. Save for a certain amount of weather erosion, the mausoleum is perfectly intact, while on the arch you can still make out the sculptures of fruits and leaves representing the fertility of "the Roman Province" (hence "Provence"), and the figures of chained captives, symbolizing Roman might.

The arch would have been a familiar sight to Vincent Van Gogh, who in 1889 requested that he be put under medical care for several months. He was living in Arles at the time, and the hospital chosen by his friends was in the old monastery St-Paul-de-Mausole, a hundred metres or so east of Les Antiques; it remains a psychiatric clinic today. Although the regime was more prison than hospital, Van Gogh was allowed to wander out around the Alpilles and painted prolifically during his twelve-month stay. The Oliviers' Fields, The Reaper, The Enclosed Field and The Evening Stroll are among the 150 canvases of this period. The church and cloisters can be visited (9am–6pm; free): take avenue Edgar-Leroy or allée St-Paul from avenue Vincent-Van-Gogh, go past the main entrance of the clinic and into the gateway on the left at the end of the wall.

Not very far beyond the hospital is a signposted farm called Mas de la Pyramide (daily: July & Aug 9am–noon & 2–7pm; Sept–June 9am–noon & 2–5pm; €3.05). It's an old troglodyte farm in the Roman quarries for Glanum with a lavender and cherry orchard surrounded by cavernous openings into the rock filled with ancient farm equipment and rusting bicycles. The farmhouse is part medieval and part Gallo-Roman, with pictures of the owner's family who have lived there for generations.

One of the most impressive ancient settlements in France, Glanum, 500m south of Les Antiques (daily: April–Sept 9am–7pm; Oct–March 9am–noon & 2–5pm; €5.49), was dug out from alluvial deposits at the very foot of the Alpilles. The site was originally a Neolithic homestead; then, between the second and first centuries BC, the Gallo-Greeks, probably from Massalia (Marseille), built a city here, on which the Gallo-Romans, from the end of the first century BC to the third century AD, constructed yet another town.

Though Glanum is one of the most important archeological sites in France, it can be very difficult to get to grips with. Not only were the later buildings moulded onto the earlier, but the fashion at the time of Christ was for a Hellenistic style. You can distinguish the Greek levels from the Roman most easily by the stones: the earlier civilization used massive hewn rocks while the Romans preferred smaller and more accurately shaped stones. The leaflet at the admission desk is helpful, as are the attendants if your French is good enough.

The site is bisected by a road running from north to south, with several Hellenic houses to the northwest. East of here are the Thermes, a complex of furnaces, bathing chambers and pools, and beyond this the Maison du Capricorne with some fine mosaics. A forum dating from Roman times is south of here, near a restored theatre and the superb sculptures on the Roman Temples Geminées (Twin Temples). The temples also have fragments of mosaics, fountains of both Greek and Roman periods and first-storey walls and columns. As the site narrows in the ravine at the southern end, you'll find a Grecian edifice around a sacred spring – the feature that made this location so desirable. Steps lead down to a pool, with a slab above for the libations of those too disabled to descend. An inscription records that Agrippa was responsible for restoring it in 27 BC and dedicating it to Valetudo, the Roman goddess of health.