Cours Mirabeau

It is lined with many cafés, one of the most famous being Les Deux Garçons and during its history frequented by famous French cultural figures such as Paul Cézanne, Émile Zola and Albert Camus.

The street also divides Aix into two portions, the Quartier Mazarin, or "new town", which extends to the south and west, and the Ville Comtale, or "old town", which lies to the north with its wide but irregular streets and its old mansions dating from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

From 1646 onwards, rich locals started moving into the Mazarin quarter, built by Michele Mazzarino (1605 - 1648), known as "Michel Mazarin", the Dominican who was appointed Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence in 1645 by Pope Innocent X. Mazzarino had been professor of theology at the College of Saint Thomas, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome, and Master of the Sacred Palace under Pope Urban VIII in 1642.

[1] In 1650, the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence commissioned the building of a thoroughfare for carts where there was a crumbled rampart.

Whilst he first thought of building a palace there, the Duke of Vendôme came around and decided on the 'wildness of fields'.