If you try to understand the ”bourgeois” way of life in Provence, you should visit the surroundings of Aix-en-Provence, where huge bastides can be found. The bigger ones would be called castles anywhere else : they were both holiday and agricultural domains, and where occuped in the summer time by wealthy families from Aix and Marseille, when the heat became oppressive…

[picture: château de la Pioline, hotel] 

A few bastides have become famous and have contributed to the international popularity of Provence and its way of life.

Among them, the Château la Canorgue [picture below] in Bonnieux,  main setting of the film A Good Year (2006) by Ridley Scott and the Bastide Neuve in La Treille, setting of the novel La Gloire de mon Père (1957) that belonged to its author Marcel Pagnol.