Aix-en-Provence Luxury Itinerary: The Perfect 7-Day Guide

It is Tuesday morning – or possibly Wednesday, you have already lost track – and you are sitting at a café table on the Cours Mirabeau with a café crème and a copy of Le Monde you are not actually reading. The plane trees above you are doing their extraordinary thing with the light, filtering it into something soft and painterly. A woman with a basket of lavender walks past. Someone is playing Satie very quietly somewhere. You think: this is exactly what I came here for. Then the waiter brings a second coffee without being asked, and you decide that Aix-en-Provence may be the most civilised place on earth. This seven-day luxury itinerary won’t argue with you.

Day 1: Arrival and First Impressions – The Grand Boulevard

Theme: Settling in, slowing down, and learning the rhythms of the city.

Morning: Arrive at Aix-en-Provence TGV station – well connected to Paris in under three hours, which is the kind of fact that makes you feel the world is properly organised – and transfer to your villa or hotel. Take the first hour or two to simply walk the Cours Mirabeau without agenda. This is the city’s great artery, a broad, majestic boulevard lined with four rows of plane trees and a procession of fountains, cafés, and grand 17th-century hôtels particuliers on one side, with a livelier mix of shops and brasseries on the other. There is nothing performative about its elegance; it simply exists, and has for centuries.

Afternoon: The old town – the Vieil Aix – rewards a slow first afternoon. The streets around the Place d’Albertas and Place Richelme are the city at its most quietly beautiful: baroque architecture, ochre and honey-coloured facades, sudden small squares where a fountain appears as if placed there by someone with exceptional taste. The Saturday and Tuesday morning markets on Place Richelme are among the finest food markets in Provence, but even on a quiet weekday afternoon the square has a particular quality of stillness. Stop into a fromagerie. Buy something you don’t strictly need.

Evening: For your first dinner, choose one of the brasseries on or just off the Cours Mirabeau rather than heading immediately for the destination restaurants. You want to ease in. Order the local rosé – the Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence appellation produces wines that pair extraordinarily well with the idea of sitting outside in warm air – and whatever the kitchen is doing with the catch of the day. Book ahead, even here. Aix has understood that good tables fill up.

Practical tip: If you’re driving, use the Arc-en-Ciel or La Rotonde underground car parks. The centre is largely pedestrianised and your legs will be your most useful asset all week.

Day 2: Cézanne Country – Art, Light, and the Mountain

Theme: Understanding why painters keep coming here and never quite leave.

Morning: Begin at the Atelier Cézanne, the artist’s studio preserved on the northern edge of the old town exactly as he left it – his coat, his apples, the particular quality of north-facing light he was so precise about capturing. It is a modest space that does something immodest to you if you give it time. Book tickets in advance; the sessions are limited and deservedly popular. Afterwards, follow the Circuit Cézanne, a walking trail marked with bronze plaques across the city identifying spots the artist painted repeatedly. The route is self-guided, unhurried, and the kind of cultural experience that doesn’t feel like homework.

Afternoon: Take a car – or arrange a private driver, which costs less than you might think and eliminates the parking predicament entirely – up towards the flanks of Mont Sainte-Victoire. The mountain that Cézanne painted over eighty times looks different in person than in any reproduction: larger, more present, with a chalky luminosity that shifts as clouds move across it. There are walking trails from the village of Le Tholonet, just east of Aix, ranging from gentle vineyard strolls to more serious ascents. For a luxury itinerary, a private guided hike with a local guide who knows the terrain and carries decent wine is not an indulgence – it is good planning.

Evening: Return to Aix for dinner at one of the city’s table-cloth establishments in the old town. The restaurant scene around the Place des Cardeurs – a broad square that fills with tables on warm evenings – offers everything from traditional Provençal cooking to more contemporary French technique. Reserve a table outside if the weather permits. In summer, it nearly always does.

Day 3: Market Day, Provençal Cooking, and a Long Lunch

Theme: Eating as a serious cultural pursuit, which in Provence it genuinely is.

Morning: If your visit falls on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, visit the morning markets on Place Richelme and the surrounding streets. The flower market, the cheese stalls, the honey vendors, the men selling olives from terracotta bowls the size of birdbaths – it is the kind of sensory experience that makes the word “experience” feel entirely adequate for once. Even if you have a fully staffed villa kitchen, buy something. A wedge of aged Comté. A jar of tapenade. A bunch of something deeply purple that you cannot name.

Afternoon: Book a Provençal cooking class with a local chef – several operate out of private kitchens and renovated farmhouses in the villages around Aix, and the quality is genuinely high. A morning market run followed by a three-hour class learning to make daube Provençale, socca, or a proper tian is the kind of activity that sounds virtuous and turns out to be mostly about drinking rosé at noon while chopping things. This is not a criticism.

Evening: Given the afternoon’s exertions, an easy evening: a bottle from a local cave à vins, a terrace, the particular light that falls over the rooftops of Aix around seven in the evening. Some days the itinerary is what you don’t do.

Practical tip: Several wine merchants on and around the Cours Mirabeau offer tasting sessions and can arrange direct delivery to UK or international addresses. Ask at the counter.

Day 4: Villages, Vineyards, and the Luberon

Theme: Beyond the city – the Provençal countryside at its most characterful.

Morning: Take a day trip east into the Luberon, approximately forty-five minutes from Aix. The perched villages here – Lourmarin, Ansouis, Cucuron – have a quality of permanence that the more heavily photographed villages further north have somewhat lost beneath coach park infrastructure. Lourmarin in particular has a quietly excellent restaurant scene and a Renaissance château worth an hour of your time. Arrive early, before the day trippers, when the streets belong to bakers and cats in roughly equal measure.

Afternoon: Stop at a Luberon vineyard – the Luberon AOC produces increasingly serious reds and whites alongside its rosés – for a private tasting. Several domaines offer cellar tours and seated tastings by appointment, and given that you are in a region where winemaking goes back to the Roman occupation, this feels less like a leisure activity and more like paying your respects. Book a table for lunch at one of the village restaurants and order the slowest thing on the menu.

Evening: Return to Aix in the early evening. The drive back along the D56 through the Trévaresse ridge offers views that require no further commentary. Dinner at the villa tonight – whatever you brought back from the market, properly cooked, with the doors open onto the terrace.

Day 5: Thermal Waters, Spa, and the Art of Doing Very Little

Theme: Aix was built on thermal springs. The clue, as the French point out, is in the name.

Morning: Aix-en-Provence has been a spa town since the Romans arrived and decided that the naturally hot, mineral-rich springs emerging from the ground were too good to ignore – an assessment that has not changed in two thousand years. The city’s thermal facilities offer treatments ranging from classic hydrotherapy to contemporary wellness programmes. A morning thermal circuit, followed by a treatment – a deep-tissue massage, a Provençal botanical wrap using local lavender and thyme extracts – is the correct use of a Thursday morning.

Afternoon: The Granet Museum, housed in the former palace of the Knights of Malta in the heart of the old town, contains one of the finest regional collections in France: works by Cézanne, Ingres, Rubens, and Rembrandt, alongside rotating contemporary exhibitions. After the morning’s physical indulgences, the intellectual ones feel earned. Spend two hours here without rushing. The Giacometti room alone justifies the visit.

Evening: Cocktails on a rooftop terrace – several of the boutique hotels in the old town have rooftop bars open to non-residents – watching the light change over the rooftops. Dinner at one of the city’s Michelin-recognised tables. Book well in advance; the best seats in Aix are not waiting for you.

Day 6: The Camargue and the Coast – A Longer Excursion

Theme: Salt flats, flamingos, and the kind of landscape that makes you question your assumptions about southern France.

Morning: Head southwest towards the Camargue, roughly ninety minutes from Aix, one of the most singular landscapes in Europe. The wetlands, salt marshes, and rice paddies of this extraordinary delta feel nothing like the Provence of lavender fields and market squares – which is precisely why they are worth a day. Arrange a private jeep or horseback excursion through the nature reserve: this is the right way to see flamingos in their actual habitat rather than from a car window on a busy road.

Afternoon: Continue to the coast. The beaches around Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer are wide, wild, and relatively uncrowded compared to the Côte d’Azur. The town itself has a compelling otherness – the Romani pilgrimage culture, the fortress church, the painted boats – that rewards an hour of wandering. Lunch at a waterside restaurant specialising in Camargue beef and the local teurgoule rice dishes. The region has its own distinct culinary identity, and it is excellent.

Evening: The drive back to Aix through the flat light of late afternoon is one of those journeys that extends itself pleasantly. Stop at Salon-de-Provence if time allows – the old town is handsome and largely unvisited by tour groups, which in itself is a recommendation. Back in Aix for a late dinner, or simply a long evening on the terrace with whatever wine survived the day.

Day 7: The Slow Farewell – Markets, Galleries, and a Final Long Lunch

Theme: Leaving at the correct pace, which is slow.

Morning: A final morning in Aix should involve no agenda whatsoever before ten. Breakfast at the villa, then a last walk through the old town – through the streets behind the cathedral of Saint-Sauveur, where the cloister contains some of the finest Romanesque stonework in Provence and the baptistery dates to the 4th century. This is not a tourist trap; it is a building that has been quietly extraordinary for sixteen hundred years and doesn’t require your enthusiasm to justify itself.

Afternoon: The contemporary art scene in Aix is less celebrated than Paris or Lyon but genuinely rewarding. The Hôtel de Caumont, a restored 18th-century mansion, hosts major travelling exhibitions with the kind of production values and curatorial intelligence that justify the ticket price. The café in the formal garden is among the most pleasant places to sit in the city. Linger. This is the afternoon for it.

Final Lunch: Reserve a table at one of the city’s established Provençal restaurants for a long, unhurried final lunch. Order the full menu. Accept the cheese board. When the waiter asks if you want coffee, say yes. You are in no hurry. You are, if anything, considering whether you need to go home at all. This is the correct response to seven days in Aix-en-Provence.

Practical tip: If departing by TGV, the station is twenty minutes from the old town by taxi. Allow time – French high-speed trains are punctual in a way that English ones find aspirational.

Where to Stay: The Case for a Luxury Villa

A luxury itinerary of this kind deserves a base that does not feel like a hotel room. The Aix-en-Provence region has an exceptional stock of private villas – from restored 18th-century bastides with formal gardens, heated pools, and private chef arrangements, to more contemporary properties in the hills above the city with views across the Sainte-Victoire. The advantage of a villa is not simply space, though there is that. It is the ability to arrive back from a day in the Luberon and immediately open a bottle of local wine on a private terrace. To have breakfast at your own table in the garden. To host a dinner cooked by a private chef using ingredients you bought at the market that morning. It is, in short, Aix-en-Provence on your own terms.

Base yourself in a luxury villa in Aix-en-Provence and the entire week takes on a different quality – less tourism, more life. That distinction matters more than it sounds.

Planning Your Trip

For everything you need to know before you arrive – the best seasons, how to get here, what to pack, and the practical intelligence that makes the difference between a good trip and a great one – our full Aix-en-Provence Travel Guide covers the ground comprehensively.