Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). 2025 is the Cézanne year for Aix-en-Provence: the Provencal city has invested widely in the renovation of two places related to the history of the painter (his workshop and the Jas de Bouffan) as well as in a large exhibition, presented at the Granet Museum (until October 12). “Celebrate on one side and destroy on the other”Julien Lacaze, president of the association sites & monuments: with three other associations, he denounces a vast real estate development project taking place at the foot of the famous Sainte-Victoire mountain. In the spring, the associations filed an appeal to stop this vast new city project, displaying a total area of 326,000 m2.
Located between two highways, south of the Vasarely Foundation and very close to Jas de Bouffan – Cézanne’s childhood house -, the future ZAC of Constance extends over 90 hectares of agricultural land. This land reserve has long been the subject of a reflection for the city of Aix, which materialized in 2016 by a competition for the Urban Project Management of the ZAC, competition won by the agency Devillers et Associés. But since then, the city and the future promoters of the area have found a small association on their way, safeguarding the landscapes of Cézanne, which patiently lists the views where the painter posed his easel and being in the grip of the project.
About fifty points of view
On this set directly overlooking the Sainte-Victoire mountain, the association now counts around fifty points of view from which Cézanne has painted works today hung in the greatest museums in the world. “The municipality of Aix-en-Provence is preparing, on the sly, to destroy, at the gates of the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, renovated at great expense, where it lived, the Constance site and the last Cézanian perspectives at the source of the genius of the painter”, denounces the press release common to associations.
Paul Cézanne, The Sainte-Victoire Mountain (1897), Kunstmuseum of Bern, Legs Cornelius Gurlitt.
The issue of this site goes beyond the history of art, and the two heritage defense associations are allied in this fight at France Nature Environnement (FNE) and Arc River living to put a brake on this project. “Each association has its field of expertise and our arguments are added, explains Julien Lacaze. This is particularly interesting, especially with FNE, an association with which we do not always agree. »»
Sites & Monuments this time perfectly married the environmental argument of FNE, which denounces the derogations of the prohibition of destruction of protected species granted last March by the prefecture for this project: some 174 fauna species, 216 floristic species are indeed threatened, of which 40 are protected. “It is an emblematic file, where there are many current issues: soil non-artificialization, the preservation of wetlands and the preservation of a picturesque landscape in the first sense of the word”, lists Julien Lacaze.
