Les Arcs-sur-Argens is a town in central Var whose medieval quarter, Le Parage, climbs in narrow lanes to a thirteenth-century tower. A few kilometres away, the chapel of Sainte-Roseline holds a mosaic by Marc Chagall. The commune lies at the heart of the Côtes de Provence appellation, and the surrounding estates are open to visitors.
You leave the car at the bottom and walk up. Le Parage is the medieval core of Les Arcs, a tangle of cobbled lanes, vaulted passages and stairways that wind around the hill up to the keep, the only remnant of the castle of the Villeneuve lords. The houses have been restored with care and without excess, and you still meet residents rather than shops. From the top, the view runs across the Argens plain and, in the distance, the Maures.
An hour is enough, longer if you sit down at one of the terraces set out in the old courtyards. The lower town, around the square and the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, has its shops, its market and an ordinary daily life that comes as a relief after too many picture-postcard villages.
Three kilometres away, among the vines, the chapel of Sainte-Roseline is a place apart. The former abbey of La Celle-Roubaud, founded in the eleventh century, holds the body of Roseline de Villeneuve, who died in 1329, displayed in a glass reliquary. Around it, twentieth-century art has settled on the Romanesque: a mosaic by Marc Chagall, The Meal of the Angels, vast and luminous, a bas-relief by Giacometti, windows by Bazaine and Ubac. The commissions came in the 1970s from Marguerite Maeght, and you find here the spirit of the foundation at Saint-Paul-de-Vence, transposed into a country chapel.
The chapel opens in the afternoon, with hours that vary by season. The neighbouring wine estate, Château Sainte-Roseline, carries the same name and can also be visited.
Les Arcs is home to the Maison des Vins Côtes de Provence, where you can taste, on site and at cellar prices, hundreds of wines from the appellation and get advice before heading out to the growers. It is the best way to plan an afternoon of tasting without driving at random.
The estates of the Les Arcs plain and the hills of Taradeau and Vidauban open their cellars all year. Rosé most of the time, but also reds built to keep, which surprise anyone who knows Provence only through its summer bottles.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 25 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
Discover the estate →
