A 12th-century monastery that has operated as a psychiatric hospital since the early 19th century. Van Gogh spent a year here from May 1889 to May 1890 and created some of his most celebrated works in the gardens and the fields just outside. Visitors can tour the Romanesque cloister, the chapel, and a faithful reconstruction of Van Gogh's room, as well as walk the garden paths he painted repeatedly.
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole
Monastery asylum where Van Gogh painted The Starry Night
A story
Van Gogh checked himself into the asylum here in May 1889, a few months after cutting off part of his ear in Arles. During his year at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole he produced around 150 paintings and 100 drawings, including The Starry Night, Irises, and Wheat Field with Cypresses. He was free to paint in the gardens and the surrounding fields, and the landscape he saw — the olive groves, the Alpilles hills, the cypress trees — runs through all of it.