The Most Beautiful Places in Bouches-du-Rhône
8 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Bouches-du-Rhône are Les Baux-de-Provence, Arles Amphitheatre and Palais Longchamp. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Bouches-du-Rhône gathers much of Provence in one département: the Rhône delta of the Camargue, the white limestone hills of the Alpilles and Sainte-Victoire, the great port of Marseille and the cliffs of the Calanques. Greek settlers founded Marseille around 600 BCE, Rome made Arles one of the leading cities of Gaul, and the clear southern light later drew painters such as Van Gogh and Cézanne.
In Arles, the Roman amphitheatre, built around the end of the 1st century, still holds bullfights and performances inside its two arcaded storeys; a few streets away, the Church of St. Trophime has a Romanesque portal carved with the Last Judgement and a cloister of sculpted capitals. Les Baux-de-Provence is a village and ruined castle on a rocky spur of the Alpilles; the mineral bauxite takes its name from it.
Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a long limestone ridge east of Aix-en-Provence, is the mountain Cézanne painted again and again. Marseille's Palais Longchamp is a monument to water: a colonnaded palace with a monumental fountain built to celebrate the arrival of the canal that brought the Durance's water to the city. To the south, the Calanques National Park protects narrow inlets of white rock and turquoise sea between Marseille and Cassis.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Les Baux-de-Provence | Most beautiful village | |
| 2 | Arles Amphitheatre | Amphitheatre | ✓ |
| 3 | Palais Longchamp | Water tower | |
| 4 | Montagne Sainte-Victoire | Mountain | |
| 5 | Church of St. Trophime, Arles | Church building | |
| 6 | Calanques National Park | Protected area | |
| 7 | Cosquer Cave | Cave | |
| 8 | Falaises Soubeyranes | Cliff |
01 Les Baux-de-Provence
France · 37.1 km from Nîmes43.744° N 4.795° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Image by gillag from Pixabay Les Baux-de-Provence occupies a bare limestone spur in the Alpilles hills, and the village and the ruined castle above it seem to grow out of the rock itself. From the edge of the plateau the view runs south across the plains, where olive groves fill the valley.
Did you know? The quarry projections began in 1976 under the name Cathédrale d'Images, long before the site became Carrières de Lumières.
02 Arles Amphitheatre
Arènes d'Arles
France · 28.3 km from Nîmes43.678° N 4.631° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PierreSelim · CC BY 3.0 In the middle of Arles, the old Roman amphitheatre still dominates the city, its two tiers of arches curving around an oval arena. Built around AD 90, shortly after the Colosseum in Rome, it is about 136 metres long and 109 metres wide and held some twenty thousand spectators for gladiatorial combats and animal hunts.
Did you know? When King Francis I visited Arles in 1516 he was dismayed to find so grand a building in such a wretched state.
03 Palais Longchamp
France · 2.2 km from Marseille43.304° N 5.394° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Palais Longchamp is Marseille's monument to drinking water. In the 1830s the city was short of water and suffered two deadly cholera epidemics, and it answered by building the Canal de Marseille, some 85 kilometres long, to bring water from the Durance.
Did you know? The names of the rivers feeding the Durance are engraved on the triumphal arch, so the monument doubles as a map of where Marseille's water comes from.
04 Montagne Sainte-Victoire
France · 15.9 km from Aix-en-Provence43.539° N 5.645° E
Image by lecreusois from Pixabay Few mountains have been looked at as hard as this one. Montagne Sainte-Victoire is a limestone ridge some 18 km long rising east of Aix-en-Provence, and its south face drops in a pale wall of cliffs between 500 and 700 metres high that, in the Provençal sun, reads from the plain like a great white rampart.
Did you know? A disused quarry on the mountain produced pink marbre d'Aix, used for the bases of the lion sculptures on Aix's Fontaine de la Rotonde.
05 Church of St. Trophime, Arles
Ancienne cathédrale Saint-Trophime à Arles
France · 28.2 km from Nîmes43.677° N 4.628° E
Image by djedj from Pixabay The west portal of St. Trophime in Arles is one of the masterpieces of Romanesque sculpture.
Did you know? One capital bears the arms of Arles beside the spread eagle of the Holy Roman Emperor, who ruled the city when it was carved.
06 Calanques National Park
Parc national des Calanques
France · 11.1 km from Marseille43.209° N 5.449° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Calanques are a coast of white limestone cut into narrow inlets, running east from the southern edge of Marseille past Cassis toward La Ciotat.
Did you know? In the Trémies cave, archaeologists found the oldest human traces in the massif: a hearth and stone tools probably more than 300,000 years old.
07 Cosquer Cave
Grotte Cosquer
France · 11.7 km from Marseille43.203° N 5.449° E
Kleber Rossillon & Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur / Sources 3D MC · CC BY-SA 4.0 Cosquer Cave is the only known decorated Ice Age cave whose entrance now lies beneath the sea. The way in opens 37 metres down at the foot of the cliffs of Cap Morgiou, in the limestone inlets east of Marseille, and a passage about 175 metres long climbs from there to chambers that still hold air.
Did you know? Its paintings include great auks, a flightless seabird driven to extinction in the 19th century.
08 Falaises Soubeyranes
France · 19.6 km from Marseille43.184° N 5.563° E
Mmullie (WMF) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Between the fishing port of Cassis and the old shipbuilding town of La Ciotat, the Provençal coast rears up into a wall of rock that drops sheer into the Mediterranean.
Did you know? Cap Canaille, at the northern end of the cliffs, rises to 363 metres above the sea.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Bouches-du-Rhône?
- On our list, Les Baux-de-Provence ranks first, followed by Arles Amphitheatre and Palais Longchamp.
- Why did Cézanne paint Mont Sainte-Victoire so often?
- Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence and returned again and again to the mountain visible from the countryside around his home. He painted it in dozens of oils and watercolours, using it to explore structure, colour and form.
- What is a calanque?
- A calanque is a narrow, steep-sided inlet cut into limestone along the Mediterranean coast, formed by river erosion and flooded when sea levels rose. The Calanques between Marseille and Cassis became a French national park in 2012.
- Why was the Palais Longchamp built?
- The Palais Longchamp was built in the 19th century to celebrate the Canal de Marseille, which brought water from the Durance to a city that had suffered droughts and cholera. Its central fountain and colonnades frame the end of the canal, and its wings house museums.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Bouches-du-Rhône?
- In our collection, the places in Bouches-du-Rhône are most often mountains (1), cliffs (1), caves (1) and national parks (1).
- How many places are on this list in Bouches-du-Rhône?
- The list covers 8 places.