Provence: Its History, What to See and What to Taste

Like most of the Mediterranean, Provence owes its rise mainly to ancient Rome. But people had settled here long before the Romans arrived.

Thanks to its favourable climate, the area of today’s Provence and its surroundings is among the earliest inhabited parts of Europe. The oldest finds – stone tools from the Vallonnet cave on the nearby Côte d’Azur – point to a human presence roughly a million years ago.

Yet life on the Mediterranean coast was no bed of roses for its first settlers. During the Palaeolithic, ice ages alternated with warmer periods and the sea level changed dramatically. For what is now Provence this meant being flooded at one time and, at another, gaining a great deal of land that was then exposed to erosion.

A reminder of that era is one of the most remarkable prehistoric sites in Provence – the Cosquer cave in the Calanque de Morgiou near Marseille, whose entrance lies 37 metres below the surface of the Mediterranean. The diver Henri Cosquer found the entrance in 1985, but the paintings in the dry part of the cave only came to light in 1991. Its walls are covered with drawings of animals and outlines of human hands some 19,000 to 30,000 years old. Since 2022 you can visit a faithful replica of the cave at the Cosquer Méditerranée museum in Marseille.

Once the weather calmed down, the climate settled and the coastline stopped shifting, the region became an exceptionally attractive place to live. Tribe followed tribe, drawn by fertile soil, a mild climate and plentiful natural resources. The sea nearby meant a supply of fresh fish, and so the south-east of what is now France became a favourite spot for almost everyone who knew about it at the time...

As early as the 7th century BC, Greek traders from Rhodes were visiting this coast. The first permanent settlement, however, was founded around 600 BC by Greeks from Phocaea in Asia Minor: Massalia, which later grew into today’s Marseille. Under the Greeks it became a wealthy port and an important trading centre on the Mediterranean coast.

In its day Massalia was so important that it founded small colonies of its own, minted coins that have been found all over Gaul, and extended its influence deep inland. But it was constantly threatened by the Ligurians and by the Celtic tribes then spreading across what is now France. So in the 2nd century BC the people of Massalia turned for help to a new great power – Rome. And the duel between Asterix and Obelix and Caesar could begin...

The magic potion, of course, remained a legend, and the Romans imposed a new order on the region. Three times over, in fact – in 181, 154 and 125 BC. Nothing seemed to stand in the way of Massalia’s further growth. That lasted only until two Roman giants fell out – Caesar and Pompey. Massalia had the misfortune to choose the wrong side in the quarrel – Pompey’s... In 49 BC Caesar’s forces took the city, and it lost its territories, its political influence and its power.

The result was thorough Romanisation. The Romans built an unprecedented number of monuments and structures here. And to make it quite clear who was master and who made the decisions, they called the territory Provincia Romana.

And the real history of Provence begins...