The Coliseum’s New Gladiator Fights With Guitar Strings.

Jules Heartly | July 2025

I was drawn to Arles, France by the stories of dreams and despair of Vincent Van Gogh expressed in his large number of paintings.  His art crosses the lines of life and decay, of loneliness and togetherness, of mess and order. A tension of the mind struggling to find peace among the world noise.  A tension for artistic productivity in the middle of emotional chaos. 

A legacy palpable today not only on his master paintings, or on the ones of his many followers but in the day to day of the talented artists still living and thriving in Arles.

Artists but not only painters but also musicians like Virginia, a woman in his early 70’s, who 20 years ago decided to leave behind her job and profession to pursue the thing she loved to do and was good at: singing.  She went back to school for guitar lessons and never looked back. Ever since, and in the company of her dog, Lola,  she has been performing in the streets of Arles near the Roman coliseum. Or as they called it, the Arènes d’Arles, a colossal ring of stone where 20,000 souls once gathered. They came to cheer, to bleed, to forget the brevity of life in the thunder of combat and the blur of wild beasts. Gladiators walked its sand-strewn stage beneath the sun’s indifferent gaze, while the crowd roared like a single, fevered animal.

Perhaps in a faint way similar to what tourists do when they stop to listen to Virginia’s music, her cheer to life, in the midst of the craziness of the world we are living in.

Born in Spain, Virginia moved to Arles during a time the city was friendlier and less assaulted by drug addicts and beggars. “I came with other musicians but as they continued to other cities, I decided to stay in Arles and do a solo act”, She told me.

Why Arles? A city that lies like a half-forgotten dream on the banks of the Rhone river, where time has folded itself into the very air. A place where the past speaks not in whispers, but in echoing footsteps across marble, in the hush of olive trees leaning toward memory?

“There are always people from all around the world, from different backgrounds..” “They appreciate  my music and I enjoy talking to them.” Virginia said, answering my question.

But why to play by the coliseum? Perhaps because the wind moves through its arches like breath through a flute, carrying stories older than memory, as so does Virginia’s music.

“Sometimes I move closer to the main plaza by the restaurants specially in the evening,” she continues “ but the mornings here are special and so are the visitors and their stories”.

Virginia’s story of landing her musical career late in life, brings us back to  Van Gogh himself who was a late starter in art (beginning seriously at 27), making Virginia’s artistic rebirth at 50+ part of a grand tradition of artists who found their calling later in life.

“I love playing music here, the only other place I dream of performing with my music is Mexico City, with a Mariachis band.” Virginia says a smile forming on her face illuminated by her already laughing eyes.

And I understand her love for Arles, or “Arelate” as the Romans called it, “the city beside the marshes.” It was no mere outpost. It was a crown in Caesar’s campaign, a city of poets, soldiers, merchants, and gods.

The centuries wore down empires but not Arles. Arles did not resist change — she absorbed it, layer upon layer, like sediment in a riverbed. And that reminds me of Virginia adapting to life changes, starting a new career and life at a point where many other people feel like stopping or merely just going by.

But not Virginia and neither Arles, A city that watched the world go by: crusaders, troubadours, revolutionaries. Arles witnessed Van Gogh, sun-drunk and mad with color, paint her sky with stars. And still she watches, stone-eyed and ancient, while tourists and ghosts walk the same old streets.

Arles, a  city visited by the medieval jongleurs who wandered southern France, carrying stories and songs from town to town. And Virginia embodies this tradition of itinerant artists who choose passion over security.

And as part of the artistic theme in Arles, there is the creativity in its restaurants like the one I found in L’Antonelle Bistro, where I stopped to have dinner not knowing I would enjoy many of the most delicious dishes I’ve had while in France. A small bistro with an ample terrace where reservation is recommended but you could always take a chance when in town.

Arles breaths art in all its ways and it is not a city — she is a living scripture. Her coliseum stands not as a ruin but as a sentinel, guarding the threshold between then and now.

And if you listen, truly listen, you may hear the chant of Roman feet, the brush of a painter’s easel, and the timeless voice of stones whispering: “I Remember”.

And I will always remember the story of Virginia, her tenacity, her capacity to adapt, mold, enjoying the pass of life, not as a witness but as an artist sculpturing her masterpiece: Herself!.

And she is there to prove and remind us  It’s Never Too Late to Start Over.

Thank you for reading my blog, as usual I would love your comments and stories on the subject.

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