Provence Living

Life in Provence has much in common with the rest of France – not least a love of food, family, wine and good living. But make no mistake: this is a region that's fiercely proud of its history, heritage and culture, and it's important to get to grips with Provençal passions if you want to understand what makes its people tick.

A Question of Identité

Young or old, people in the south tend to share a staunch loyalty to the hamlet, village, town or city in which they live. People in Marseille have a particularly passionate attachment to their city, a port known for its stereotyped rough-and-tumble inhabitants, who are famed among the French for their exaggerations and imaginative fancies, such as the tale about the sardine that blocked Marseille port.

Markedly more Latin in outlook and temperament, Niçois exhibit a zest for the good life in common with their Italian neighbours; law-abiding Monégasques dress up to the nines, and don’t break the law or gossip. In rural pastures where family trees go back several generations and occupations remain firmly implanted in the soil, identity is deeply rooted in tradition.

Affluent outsiders buying up the region are prompting some traditional village communities to question their own (shifting) identities. With 20% of privately owned homes being résidences secondaires (second homes), everyday shops in some villages are struggling to stay open year-round, while property prices in many places have spiralled out of reach of local salaries.

Le Weekend

The working week in Provence is much like any working week in a developed country: plagued with routine, commuting and getting the children to school, albeit with more sunshine than in many places.

The weekend, however, is when living in Provence comes into its own. Going to the local market on Saturday or Sunday morning is a must, not only to pick the finest ingredients for a delicious lunch or dinner but also to catch up on gossip at the stalls or stop for a coffee at the village cafe.

Sport is another weekend favourite; football, cycling, trekking, sailing, skiing and scuba-diving are all popular in the region. Between April and October many people head to the beach for the afternoon.

Weekends also mean going out, whatever your age. Young people pile into the region's bars and nightclubs (the latter don't open until 11pm, so partying generally finishes in the wee hours of the morning); older generations dress up to go out for dinner, at a restaurant or a friend's house, working their way through aperitif, three courses, coffee and digestif.

GOOD READS

No titles provide better insight into Provençal living, past and present, than these:

Everybody Was So Young, Amanda Vaill Beautiful evocation of an American couple and their glam literary friends in the jazzy 1920s.

Côte d’Azur: Inventing the French Riviera, Mary Blume Fabulous portrait of Riviera life: fantasy, escapism, pleasure, fame, eccentricity…

Provence A–Z, Peter Mayle The best, the quirkiest, the most curious moments of the 20-odd years this best-selling author has spent in Provence.

Provençal Escapes, Caroline Clifton-Mogg Image-driven snoop around beautiful homes in Provence.

Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France, Kristin Espinasse Daily life in Provence through a series of French words.

Boules

If there's one image that sums up the Provençal lifestyle, it's a game of pétanque being played on a patch of dusty ground in the evening sunshine.

Pétanque (known in the rest of France as boules) was invented in La Ciotat, near Marseille, in 1910 when arthritis-crippled Jules Le Noir could no longer take the running strides prior to aiming demanded by the longue boule game. The local champion thus stood with his feet firmly on the ground – a style that became known as pieds tanques (Provençal for ‘tied feet’, from which ‘pétanque’ emerged).

To have a spin yourself (or watch the drama unfold on the village square), here are the rules:

Two to six people, split into two teams, can play. Each player has three solid metal boules (balls).
Each team takes it in turn to aim a boule at a tiny wooden ball called a cochonnet (jack), the idea being to land the boule as close as possible to it. The team with the closest boule wins the round; points are allocated by totting up how many boules the winner’s team has closest to the marker (one point for each boule). The first to notch up 13 wins the match.
The team throwing the cochonnet (initially decided by a coin toss) has to throw it from a small circle scratched in the gravel. It must be hurled 6m to 10m away. Each player aiming a boule must likewise stand in this circle, with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Underarm throwing is compulsory. Beyond that, players can roll the boule along the ground (known as pointer, literally ‘to point’) or hurl it high into the air in the hope of its landing smack-bang on top of an opponent’s boule and sending it flying out of position. This flamboyant tactic, called tirer (literally ‘to shoot’), can turn an entire game around in seconds.

Football

Long the stronghold, not to mention heart and soul, of French football, Olympique de Marseille (OM; www.om.net) was national champion for four consecutive years between 1989 and 1992, and in 2010, but the team's fortunes have been more mixed since.

The club has a die-hard fan base and the city has spurned many football greats, chief among them Zinedine Zidane, aka Zizou, who captained France to victory in the 1998 World Cup. The most important match of the year is Le Classique, played against arch-rivals Paris St-Germain.

Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger and star striker Thierry Henry both began their careers with the region’s other strong club, AS Monaco (ASM).