Cours Mirabeau

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. Mazzarino was also the brother of Giulio Mazzarino, known as "Jules Mazarin" who served as chief minister under Louis XIV.^[1]

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

By 1696 four fountains had been built : Fontaine des 9 canons, Fontaine "Moussue, Fontaine du Roi René and, to the west, "les Chevaux-Marins", now vanished.

Whilst he first thought of building a palace there, the Duke of Vendôme came around and decided on the 'wildness of fields'. Instead he commissioned the Pavillon Vendôme, where he died in 1669.

• Henry W. Lawrence (2008). City Trees: A Historical Geography from the Renaissance Through the Nineteenth Century. University of Virginia Press. pp. 36–7. ISBN 0813928001.

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• Official webpage

43°31′36″N 5°26′55″E / 43.52667°N 5.44861°E / 43.52667; 5.44861