Place du Forum and the yellow café

The Place du Forum is barely thirty metres across and carries three separate things worth a frame. The first is the café on the corner, painted the yellow Van Gogh gave it in Café Terrace at Night in 1888 and repainted that colour ever since — unashamedly a tourist stop, and it works anyway because the awning, the tables and the wall are exactly the right amount of colour against the plane trees.

The second is the north side, where two Corinthian columns and a fragment of pediment from the Roman forum are built straight into the facade of a hotel, two thousand years of masonry stacked without ceremony. The third is the square itself: gravel, plane trees, a statue of Mistral, and enough shade for a midday frame in July.

Early evening is the hour. The café lights come on, the plane trees are lit from below, and the square is busy in a way that helps rather than blocks — a couple at a table with movement around them beats an empty terrace. Morning is quieter but the yellow is flat without artificial light.

It is a working café with paying customers, so shoot from the square rather than through the tables, and if a session wants to sit, buy a drink. Everything here is public street otherwise.