On today’s art history excursion we visited Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, which contains ancient Greek ruins at the site of Glanum, a city that was taken over by the Roman Empire in 27 BCE and then eventually abandoned around 260 AD. We saw the oldest standing Roman arch in France and studied maps of how the city was originally laid out, with everything from the public baths to the government buildings to the streets that doubled as sewage systems. Then we took a trip to the Saint-Paul Asylum where Van Gogh spent the last year of his life, creating many of his masterpieces such as Starry Night and the above image of the hospital itself. The coolest part was standing in the exact spots where he worked and being able to line up the landscape paintings with their inspiration. Can’t get much closer to history than that!