TARASCON CASTLE BECOMES MUSEUM

Evening Star, Issue 22671, 10 June 1937, Page 6

TARASCON CASTLE BECOMES MUSEUM

After serving two centuries as a chateau and two as a prison, tho Castle of Tarascou is being transformed into a museum of Prgvoucal folklore, art and history. Tarascon was the favourite retreat of King Rene, poet, painter, and father of Marguerite, of Anjou, who became Queen of England, as tho wife of Henry VI. It was at Tarascon that King Rene founded the Order of the Crescent and inaugurated tho annual Festival of the Tarasque (now extinct). The Tarasque was a dragon, and was long carried in effigy by the Tarasconnais. Indeed, the Tarasque still exists, although it never knocks down pedestrians with its stupendous tail, and will be stored away in the Tarascon Museum. At Tarascon it is believed that Hannibal crossed tho Rhone at this point of the majestic river, as did hordes of the Teutons and Cimbrians who were later minted by Marius, undo of Julius Caesar. Alphonse Daudet and John Stuart Mill, who spent the final 15 years of his life at Avignon, often visited Tarascon together in the company of Mistral, the great Provencal poet, who received the Nobel prize for literature in 1906. The castle, now being transformed into a museum, is considered one of the most beautiful in all Prance..