Today’s Arlesian culture reflects the learnings and norms accumulated over thousands of years. It combines those from waves of invaders, including the Ligurians, Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, and Franks. The process of transgenerational change has selected from this pallet those norms that work with the changing times.
Like a marble roman column, a culture combines a seemingly infinite number of outwardly incompatible pieces into a structure that somehow stands up, and is beautiful.
Tourism is another wave, but a slightly different one. The “invaders” rarely stay; rather they simply look, and leave. Yet even this seemingly minor point of contact, when visited upon a place millions of times per year, has an effect. But it is more subtle and may be more insidious.
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