Rians & Provence

The fact that the Provence region is an old cultivation district is clearly visible. Each village has a surrounding area big enough for the fields to support the village, but the distances are no greater than that you can see to the next mountain village or even cycle there.

The landscape alternates between cultivated land and the wide heath landscape, the garrigue, with its bushy vegetation, an Eldorado for the wild boar.

The villages have often resorted to mountain ridges to make them easier to defend. But also to avoid the heat of the summers. The heat is a bigger torment than the cold, it can be more easily protected against. The village’s narrow winding alleys provide shade despite the high sun. The deep window niches, the thick stone walls, the airy attic spaces can partly keep the heat away indoors. For Provence, a very sunny region with over 300 days of sunshine each year and the rainfall accumulates for short but very dramatic periods.

Life in the villages can seem calm. The still life at the classic bars, the men’s low-key games on the boulevards, meetings and conversations in squares and in shops. One explanation for the apparent calm is both the fairly low retirement age and the high average life together with the deeply cemented siesta state tradition. But the tranquillity is deceptive, children and young people travel early to their educational institutions, working-class residents may travel early and come home late from their jobs, often located in cities and larger communities perhaps miles away. The jobs have moved from the farm next door to larger communities.

Text: Johan Näsström