Town Hall of Aix-en-Provence

The town hall of Aix-en-Provence features a wide, ornate wooden door carved with the coats of arms of the city. It sits at the edge of a square where the seventeenth-century clock tower stands. In sixteen fifty-five, a local mason named Jean Vallon carved these doors to display the pride of a city that had recently refused to surrender to royal troops. The wood remembers when the council insisted on governing itself, despite the pressures coming from the king in Paris.