Cours Mirabeau (Mirabeau Boulevard), Aix-en-Provence (must see)

Honore-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was an early leader of the French Revolution. He represented Aix at the historic Estates General assembly of 1789. He was for liberty while a secret supporter of the Monarchy. When he died in 1791, the nation mourned.

The Mirabeau Boulevard (Cours Mirabeau) in Aix is named in his honor. The street is one of the important axes of the city center of Aix. In 1649, as the municipality was expanding, the city's south rampart was demolished to make way for expansion projects planned by archbishop Michel Mazarin.

Mazarin's dream was a grand promenade for the wealthy bourgeois who would live in his new district. Simply called "le Cours" (Boulevard) at the time, the street was 1,445 feet long and 138 feet wide. With the assistance of architect Jean Lombard, Mazarin had drawn up plans for a new urban area. The boulevard replaced the rampart as a carriage course.

It took fifteen years to remove pieces of the old rampart and open the street so the nobility could have a place to stroll on a Sunday. The Mirabeau Boulevard is a veritable tunnel of plane trees lined with cafes, terraces, and mansions with wrought-iron balconies. The name "Mirabeau" was awarded to the street in 1876.

The Mirabeau Boulevard is decorated with fountains. Besides the most notable Fountain of the Rotunda (1860), designed by architect Theophile de Tournadre, there is the Fountain of the Nine Canons (1651), designed by Laurent Vallon, and the Mossy Fountain, built by Jacques Fosse in 1667. It runs hot water and is covered in moss. The Fountain of the Seahorses at the bottom of the street was destroyed in 1777. Only a mound remains.

At the east end of the boulevard is a statue of King Rene, restored in 2009. Some of the old mansions have been replaced with shops and markets. The street is somewhat ambivalent today, like the politics of Royalist/Revolutionary Mirabeau.