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- Overview
- Camargue cowboys
- Legend of the Camargue
Every year, the Provençal town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer hosts a pilgrimage like no other, drawing Romani people from across Europe to the wetlands and open horizons of the Camargue. The festivities are a fitting tribute to one of France’s most singular regions, famed for its white horses and cowboys.
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
“Vive Saintes-Maries!” comes the rousing cry from a man in a fedora and green silk shirt, his neck strung with silver pendants depicting hedgehogs, caravans and saints.
“Vive Sainte Sara!” comes the bellowed reply from the crowd that’s gathered alongside me in the sun-beaten square in the French coastal town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Call and response, music and rhythm are everywhere here at the Pèlerinage Gitan, a riotous pilgrimage that draws Romani communities from across Europe each May. I round a corner into another square to find flamenco guitarists and singers entwined in a gleeful duel. Each musical phrase is marked with handclaps and cries of “Olé!” from surrounding revellers.
Saintes-Maries is at the heart of the Camargue, the delta of the Rhône — a strange land of swampy marshes wedged between Montpellier and Marseille along France’s southern coast. For the most part, it remains blissfully undeveloped. Inhabited by vibrant flamingos and cowboys riding primeval, ghost-white Camargue horses, these humid wetlands have the feel of an interzone; a place apart. There can be no more fitting introduction to the region than the Pèlerinage Gitan, which is a festival like no other — a homecoming for a people defined by their statelessness.
As I wander the streets, I can smell the paprika of Hungarian goulash and the saffron of olla gitana (Andalucian Romani stew), bubbling in great cauldrons, jostling for olfactory dominance with shakshuka, paella and baked apples. Fragments of conversations in French, Spanish and Dutch reach my ears. The sound of flamenco dissolves into strains of Balkan brass, the ornamented cadences of Eastern European klezmer and the jaunty jig of Parisian gypsy jazz — a style of music pioneered by the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, a regular attendee of the Pèlerinage until his death in the early 1950s. I stop at a stall to take a face-scrunching shot of tuica, a Romanian plum brandy that’s imbibed with great gusto throughout this week-long event.
The following morning, I open my eyes to a similarly majestic lineup of Camargue horses, this time looking down at me from an arty photograph on my hotel room wall. They’re moving through a shimmering wetland, white coats pristine against the mud, their reflection fragmented by splashing hooves. Images like this have come to symbolise the Camargue and can be found plastered across hotels, restaurants and offices throughout the region. They neatly encapsulate its two biggest attractions: hardy white horses (one of the oldest breeds in the world) and their otherworldly marshland environment. I decide I need to experience both up close — and, as luck would have it, there’s a riding school, Crin Blanc, just across the road that can take me.
“Don’t worry,” says my instructor, Marine Tont, as I awkwardly clamber atop my steed later that day in preparation for a ride through the wetlands. “He’s a very calm horse. His name is Espanyol.” He’s a handsome beast, with a thick white mane and the Camargue breed’s characteristic small frame and white coat. “They’re born black or brown and turn white at six years old,” she says as we set off, Marine leading on her own horse. Wearing a yellow floral shirt and black jeans, my instructor rides with a breezy confidence — she’s from Marseille, but moved to the Camargue after university to work with horses. “If you like horses, the Camargue is the place to be,” she says with a smile.
It’s a surreal landscape: boggy marsh followed by beach, with alternating ribbons of mud, water and sand stretching to the horizon. There’s an eerie atmosphere — it feels like a place on the threshold, a liminal space between land and sea. That’s evident in the plant life, which carpets the spongy earth beneath our stirrups in ankle-high beds. Marine points out vibrant splashes of colour: lilac sea purslane, bright green glasswort and purple sea lavender. They look strange to my landlubber’s eyes, not quite terrestrial nor marine, their stalks plump and succulent like samphire and their colourful flowers encrusted with crystals of salt. Evidently they’re tasty, too, as Espanyol insists we stop every few minutes so he can snack on them.
Each sandbank is dotted with splashes of hot-pink — flamingos are another of the Camargue’s charismatic animals. We stop to watch them for a while. I’m struck by their poise and grace on one leg, perfectly balanced even while their heads scan underwater like searchlights, filtering the water for feasts of algae. The illusion of elegance is swiftly shattered, however, when they take to the air, resembling giant flying stick insects in colourful jackets.
“There are 60,000 flamingos here in the Camargue,” Marine says. “Some of them migrate in the winter, but many choose to stay.” I don’t blame them. With the vastness of the sky, the stillness of the air, the landscape one huge watery canvas in which everything is mirrored in impressionistic brush strokes, its beauty is surely not lost on anyone. The region’s most vividly coloured inhabitants get to compare the view from water level and gliding lazily above. Spotting flamingos — as well as other birds such as herons and ducks — is among the biggest visitor draws in the Camargue, particularly at protected sites like the nearby Ornithological Park of Pont de Gau.
On the way back to town, we pass a strange thatched cottage — squat, long and whitewashed, it resembles a loaf of bread topped with a pilgrim hat. “The traditional cottage of the gardian,” Marine explains. “That’s what we call cattle herders here in the Camargue. Our version of the cowboy.”
“He enchants the bull so that they want to follow him until the end, until finally he’s enticed to jump up onto the fence of the arena, and the music of Carmen blares out.” It sounds like a dance, I say. Is it sport, or art? Christian scoffs. “People here aren’t interested in art,” he says. “Passion — that’s the word which best describes it.”
Art may not be preeminent among the thoughts of razeteurs such as Christian, but it shaped the life and legend of one of the Camargue’s most famous inhabitants, Vincent van Gogh. Today, Arles — with its 50,000 inhabitants — claims the modest title of ‘capital of the Camargue’ and is the gateway to the region for many travellers. It’s rather grander than Saintes-Maries, with impressive Roman ruins and Romanesque churches looming above its medieval streets.
Van Gogh lived in Arles for just a year, but it was here he developed the unique painting style that would eventually make him a legend. The city is just a 25-minute drive from the Mas Saint Germain farm, and soon I’m heading out on a walking art tour with guide François Carre. We meet beside a bronze bust of Van Gogh in Jardin d’Été, a serene public park in central Arles. Mounted in a stone block, the artist’s face bears a suitably tortured expression.
“Van Gogh came to Arles in 1888,” says François. “He was a machine — he produced 100 paintings in 15 months here.” Our tour is punctuated with stops at illustrated information boards marking spots he once painted, including the river harbour and the Roman forum, where van Gogh produced the first of his Starry Night paintings, and a serene colonnaded garden — depicted in his work Hospital in Arles — where he was sent after cutting off an ear following an argument with his friend Paul Gauguin.
Standing in that very garden, in front of an information board that displays a copy of the work, I’m struck by the how the painting’s sense of peace contrasts so starkly with its violent origins.
Van Gogh’s legacy — along with many of his works — is showcased at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, a modern confection of steel and glass built around a 15th-century mansion. A short walk away sits the even more striking Luma Arles, a contemporary arts centre housed in a tower that rises above the town like a pile of crumpled tin foil. They’re a sharp contrast to Arles’ Roman buildings, which date from as far back as the first century BCE. François leads me through the ancient theatre, where modern stage and lighting rigs sit among millennia-old columns. Concerts are still held here in the summer, he says. In the neighbouring amphitheatre, beams of light break the darkness as we walk through the concourse. “This wasn’t just any Roman city,” François explains. “Emperor Constantine actually lived here at times in the fourth century, once Rome had become too dangerous.”
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