SAINT-REMY-DE-PROVENCE. - A small town
at the foot of the Alpilles in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in France. It is situated to the north of the ancient Glanon of the Gallic period, Glanum of the Roman age.
Since 1921, explorations conducted by the Direction des Monuments historiques have brought to light three periods of the ancient city: the first prior to the Roman conquest with a temple and Hellenistic houses; the second from the first Roman occupation until the time of Marius (102 B.C.) to the conquest of Marseilles (49 B.C.); the third up to the destruction of Glanum by the Germanic invasion ca. 270 A.D. (municipal arch, monumental gate of Glanum, mausoleum of the Julii, remarkably preserved, baths, houses, statues). After the destruction of Glanum, the inhabitants moved northward into the plain, to the site occupied by the present-day St-R.-de-P., where a baptistery from the 5th or 6th century has recently been discovered near the present-day chapel of St. Peter, built over a chapel that was first Roman, then Gothic. The current name of the town derives from the fact that the Merovingian kings donated the territory to the abbey of St-R. of Reims, and thus the settlement took the name of «Villa Sancti Remigii». From the 9th to the 14th century, however, the place was divided between two Benedictine abbeys: that of St-R. of Reims and the other of St-Pierre de Montmajour. At the end of the 10th century, mention is made of a rural chapel dedicated to St. Andrew and St. Paul, where in 1080 a monastery called St-Paul-de-Mausole arose, so named for its proximity to the mausoleum of the Julii. It was inhabited first by canons under a provost, dependent on the Cathedral Chapter of Avignon, which in 1605 ceded it to the Observant Franciscans of the Province of St. Louis. The monastery was suppressed in 1791 by the French Revolution; and since the mid-19th century it has served as an asylum for the mentally ill (the painter van Gogh resided there in 1890). The church has an 18th-century façade, but inside it preserves Provençal Romanesque architecture of the 12th century with later additions. The cloister is partly from the end of the 12th century and partly from the beginning of the 13th, with capitals featuring centaurs, chimeras, etc.