Market day in Arles

Saturday morning in Arles is market day, so we went and had a look, and to get some fresh bread and cheese and whatever else looked good.

The market runs for several hundred metres along one of the main streets around the edge of the old town, which is closed for traffic while it’s on.

Lots of stalls, some bric-a-brac, and many with food.

And – unlike the weekday market we’d passed through in Lyon – it was really busy.

After dropping our shopping at the house we walked into the centre of town and found a cafe to get lunch. The weather was – once again – outstanding, and streets were buzzing with people.

Next we headed to the Museon Arlaten, an ethnographic (eg about people and culture) museum of Provence, first set up in 1909, but recently renovated. Some pretty interesting stuff about the history of the area.

We took the long way back, via one of the bigger shops on the outskirts of the town centre, then back along the river.

Then we decided to take a look at the site of the Van Gogh painting “Langlois Bridge at Arles“, a couple of kilometres from the centre of town.

It’s not the original bridge – that was blown up in 1944 by the Germans during World War 2 – but a recreation of it.

If you simply follow Google Maps, it sends you on a walk across a motorway overpass, then through a light industrial area which gives you some perspective about how not all of Arles is picture-perfect Renaissance era homes and car-free quiet streets.

There is a way to get there along a rail trail (apparently an ongoing project), which looks like it might be nicer. Oh well.

But the bridge was worth the walk. Even if not the original, it looks the part, and it’s in a nice peaceful spot.

While walking down I’d had one eye on the time of the bus back. It was pretty warm and I thought it might be a better option than walking back.

I’d found that the local buses accept bank card fare payments – it had been introduced earlier in 2025. This once again reminded me that GTFS (routes and timetables in online maps and trip planners) and bank card payments are the lingua franca of public transport.

Arles bus route 4 only runs once an hour on Saturdays, but we timed it well – a quick look around the bridge then we walked to the bus stop.

The bus comes back a slightly roundabout way, but again – you get to see how people outside the historic centre of Arles live.

The bus dropped us close to where the market had been earlier, an easy walk back to the house.

Tomorrow we’d be heading out of town for the day.