Céret: town of art, cherries and Catalan heritage

Cityscape

The townscape of the old town of Céret around the church of Saint Pierre and the meagre remains of the former town wall, between the Place de la République and the Place de la Liberté, is unique in the entire region: the boulevards between the tall town houses are shaded by enormous plane trees, and water runs along the curbs of today's central main shopping street and many side streets. As in ancient times, it is piped into the city from higher elevations via various canals and thus still serves a bit of street cleaning. More important, however, is its cooling effect in high summer. Catherine Millet described Céret in her scandalous book The Sexual Life of Catherine M. as "a city of elegance".

It was also the special atmosphere of the little town that made it a particular tourist attraction from the winter of 1909 onwards. At that time, three artists stopped off in Céret on their way to Banyuls to visit Aristide Maillol: the Catalan sculptor Manolo Martínez Hugué, the painter Frank Burty Haviland and the composer Déodat de Séverac. The icy, stormy Tramontane prevented them from continuing their journey, however, and so they had time to write letters to their acquaintances and colleagues telling them of the beauty of Céret. As a result, almost all the famous artists of French and Spanish Cubism visited the place and thus also contributed to making Collioure an artists' colony. Even today, Céret still boasts the title of "Mecca of Cubism", and you can feel the echo of this era in the Grand Café, the former meeting place for artists that still exists today.

Museum of Modern Art

For tourists with an interest in culture, who come to relax on both sides of the Pyrenees, the town of Céret, situated in the centre of the Vallespir, is an attraction of the first order, without the place ever seeming overcrowded. Céret has an important museum of modern art (Musée d'Art moderne), whose collection comprises around 700 works by modern artists and is well worth a long journey: The collection includes more than 50 works by Pablo Picasso, more than a dozen drawings by Henri Matisse, a large-format painting by Marc Chagall, as well as various works by Joan Miró, Jean Cocteau, Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris, Aristide Maillol, Chaim Soutine, André Masson, Manolo Martínez Hugué, Auguste Herbin, Joan Brossa, Pinchus Kremegne, Jean-Louis Vila and others.

Of particular interest to most visitors are Chagall's gouache The Cow Under the Umbrella, Picasso's 28 red-brown-yellow clay bowls depicting bullfighting scenes, and a drawing also by Picasso, La Sardane à la Colombe.

Céret owes this collection to the painters Frank Burty Haviland and Pierre Brune, who had lived in the town since 1916, wanted to create a museum and called on his artistic friends in the region to "donate": The works of the older artists were actually donated to the museum by them. In more recent times, the permanent collection was constantly supplemented by the purchase of works by contemporary artists. From 1950 the steadily growing collection was on display in the former prison, since 1993 it has been housed in a new building.

Other places of interest

If you approach Céret from the Perpignan-Barcelona motorway via the D115 road, you will be surprised to glance to the left and right shortly after the current entrance to the town: Even crossing the river Tech over a modern road bridge, one discovers on the left an arched bridge of stone ashlars of exactly the same height, narrow and fragile in appearance, and on the left a narrow arched bridge of the railway, which is also no longer dewy-looking. The stone bridge dates from the early 14th century and is called Le Pont du Diable ('Devil's Bridge'), its single arch is 45 metres wide, and at its highest point it rises 22 metres above the river.

Only a few pieces of the medieval city wall remain, repeatedly restored in earlier times, but two former city gates: La Porte d'Espagne and La Porte de France, both dating from the 13th century. La Porte de France was the main gateway to the city, while La Porte d'Espagne, in Place Picasso, is now home to a museum of archaeology.

Another special feature is free public performances by a cobla on one of the boulevards from mid-July to mid-August. This traditional Catalan sardana dance orchestra attracts large numbers of locals to dance the round every Wednesday after 9pm, and a modest number of tourists to watch. The sardane is still a real folk dance in Céret for all ages, with seventy-year-old women, thirty-year-old men and ten-year-old children joining hands.

The war memorial on the Place de la Liberté was created by the famous sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944).

Céret has been the twin town of Lüchow (Wendland) in Lower Saxony since 1983. Further partnerships exist with the municipalities of Almonte and Banyoles in Spain.