Salon-de-Provence, la ville et le tombeau de Nostradamus

Salon-de-Provence

Michel de Nostredame settled in Salon-de-Provence in 1547, the year of his marriage to Anne Ponsarde, a wealthy widow with whom he would have six children. He spent the last twenty years of his life there. An apothecary by trade — he was expelled from the medical faculty of Montpellier in 1529 for having practised this "manual trade" forbidden by the statutes — he published almanacs every year from 1550, a treatise on cosmetics and preserves, and above all his Prophecies, whose first edition appeared in Lyon from the press of Macé Bonhomme in 1555 with 353 quatrains. It must be said plainly: these quatrains are a literary work of the 16th century, written in the context of the Wars of Religion; no retrospective reading has ever been validated by historians, and no quatrain has ever been interpreted as foretelling a specific event before that event took place. His reputation nonetheless earned him the protection of Catherine de' Medici, who received him at Salon together with Charles IX in 1564, and he died "Counsellor and Physician in Ordinary" to the king, on 2 July 1566, a few days after dictating a will of 3,444 écus. Buried in the church of the Cordeliers' convent, he was removed from it in 1791: national guardsmen of a Marseille battalion desecrated the tomb, and the mayor Jean-André David had the remains transferred to a side chapel of the collegiate church of Saint-Laurent, where they still lie, behind an epitaph remade in 1813. The rest is legend, and of long standing: the story of the brass plate found on the skeleton already appears in the diary of Samuel Pepys, in February 1667, who himself notes that he has read it nowhere else.

Maison de Nostradamus — ville de Salon ↗

Getting there : The collegiate church of Saint-Laurent, where Nostradamus lies, is free to enter — open from April to June on weekday afternoons, and more widely in July, August, September and December; closed from October to March except in December. The Maison de Nostradamus, rue Nostradamus, is a municipal museum bearing the "Maison des Illustres" label: audio-guided visit of around 40 minutes, €6 full price, closed on Tuesdays — but the entrance has an unsecured step and the upper floor is reached only by stairs: it is not wheelchair accessible. His birthplace, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, is a private property that cannot be visited: only the facade and the plaque can be seen, at 6 rue Hoche.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound