Provence: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Provence was inhabited from an exceptionally early age and has a bounty of prehistoric sights to prove it. In Monaco the Grottes de l'Observatoire showcase brilliant prehistoric rock scratchings that are among the world's oldest, carved one million years ago. Around 400,000 BC prehistoric man settled in Terra Amata (present-day Nice) - the archaeological site's Musée de Paléontologie Humaine de Terra Amata explores prehistoric man and his movements at this time.

Massalia (Marseille) was colonised around 600 BC by Greeks from Phocaea in Asia Minor; from the 4th century BC they established more trading posts along the coast, bringing with them olives and grapevines.

The Roman influence on Provence was tremendous, though it was only after Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul (58-51 BC) and its consequent integration into the Roman Empire that the region flourished. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in AD 476, Provence was invaded by various Germanic tribes and in the 6th century it was ceded to the Germanic Franks.

In 1486 the state of Aix ratified Provence's union with France and the centralist policies of the French kings saw the region's autonomy greatly reduced. Aix Parliament, a French administrative body, was created in 1501.

The Second Empire (1852-70) brought to the region a revival in all things Provençal, a movement spearheaded by Maillane-born poet Frédéric Mistral; the house museum in his home town celebrates his life. Rapid economic growth was another hallmark. Nice, which became part of France in 1860, was among Europe's first cities to have a purely tourist-based economy. Between 1860 and 1911 it was Europe's fastest-growing city. In the Victorian period the city became particularly popular with the English aristocracy, who followed their queen's example of wintering in mild Nice. European royalty followed soon after.

Modern History

During WWI two out of every 10 Frenchmen between 20 and 45 years of age were killed. With its primarily tourist-based economy, the Côte d'Azur recovered quickly from the post-war financial crisis that lingered in France's more industrial north.

The Côte d'Azur sparkled as an avant-garde centre in the 1920s and 1930s, with artists pushing into the new fields of cubism and surrealism, Le Corbusier rewriting the architectural textbook, and foreign writers attracted by the coast's liberal atmosphere. Nightlife gained a reputation for being cutting edge, with everything from jazz clubs to striptease.

In the late '30s depression set in and on 3 September 1939 France and Britain declared war on Germany. Following the armistice treaty, southern France fell into the 'free' Vichy France zone, although Menton and the Vallée de Roya were occupied by Italians. The Côte d'Azur - particularly Nice - became a safe haven from occupied France; by 1942 some 43,000 Jewish refugees had descended on the coast. Monaco remained neutral for the duration of WWII.

On 11 November 1942 Nazi Germany invaded Vichy France. In January 1943 the Marseille quarter of Le Panier was razed. Those who didn't leave or escape were sent to concentration camps. Two months after D-Day, on 15 August 1944, Allied forces landed on the southern coast. St-Tropez and Provence's hinterland were almost immediately liberated, but it was only after five days of heavy fighting that Allied troops freed Marseille on 28 August (three days after the liberation of Paris). Toulon was liberated on 26 August, a week after French troops first attacked the port. Italian-occupied areas in the Vallée de Roya were only returned to France in 1947.

The first international film festival at Cannes in 1946 heralded the return to party madness. The 1950s and 1960s saw a succession of society events: the marriage of Grace Kelly in 1956; the advent of topless sunbathing; and Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles appearing at the 1961 Juan-les-Pins jazz festival.

In 1962 the French colony of Algeria negotiated its independence with President Charles de Gaulle. During this time some 750,000 pieds noirs (literally 'black feet', as Algerian-born French people are known in France) settled in large urban centres like Marseille and Toulon.

Rapid industrialisation marked the 1960s, and in the 1970s tourism started making inroads into Provence's rural heart. By the turn of the new millennium the region was welcoming nine million tourists annually.

Corruption cast a cloud over France's south in the 1980s and early 1990s. Nice's mayor, Jacques Médecin, was twice found guilty of income-tax evasion during his 24-year mayorship (1966-90). In 1990 he fled to Uruguay and was convicted in absentia. He was extradited in 1994 and imprisoned in Grenoble, where he served two years of a three-and-a-half year sentence. Upon his release he returned to Uruguay to sell hand-painted T-shirts before he died aged 70.

In 1994 Yann Piat became the only member of France's National Assembly since WWII to be assassinated while in office. Following her public denunciation of the Riviera Mafia, she was shot while in her Hyères constituency. Her assassins, dubbed the 'baby killers' by the press after their conviction in 1998, were local Mafia kingpins barely in their 20s.

Recent History

The mid-1990s saw the rise of the extreme-right Front National (FN). Nowhere else in France did the xenophobic party gain such a stronghold as in Provence, where the FN stormed to victory in municipal elections. Yet the FN, led by Jean Marie Le Pen, never made any real headway in the national arena. A deadly blow was dealt to the FN in 1998 when second-in-command Bruno Mégret left to create his own breakaway faction. The next blow came in 2000 when Le Pen was suspended from the European Parliament for physically assaulting a Socialist politician.

Le Pen's incredible success in the first round of presidential elections in 2002 shocked the nation and the world. More than one million protestors took to the streets across France in the days preceding the second round of voting in which the FN politician was up against incumbent president Jacques Chirac. Eighty per cent of the electorate turned out to vote (compared to 41.41% in the first round) and Chirac won by a massive majority. Never to be defeated, Le Pen pulled out his final trump card: his blonde daughter, Marine (dubbed 'the clone' because of her uncanny likeness to her father). Despite accusations of nepotism following her appointment as party vice-chairman at the FN party congress in Nice in 2003, Marine Le Pen tried to inject youth into an otherwise ageing party (Jean Marie Le Pen is in his 70s) and was rewarded with relative success in the 2004 European elections.

Nowhere was the newfound optimism sweeping through France at the start of the new millennium more pronounced than in multicultural Marseille, France's third-largest city that, since the victory of the French team in the 1998 football World Cup and Euro 2000, has been at the cutting edge of hip-hop, rap and football.

Flash floods devastated northwestern Provence in September 2002, killing 26. A year later floodwaters rose again. This time five died and thousands lost their homes. The floods topped off a year that had seen the Festival d'Avignon paralysed by striking artists, furious at government proposals to tighten the unemployment benefit for arts workers.

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