To the south of the bourg Saint-Sauveur, the city of the Counts of Provence was the first significant extension appended to the original site in the twelfth century. Approaching town by the Via Aurelia, the Roman road leading from Rome itself to Arles and furthest Spain, the traveller was confronted by a massive, multiple construction composed of two Roman towers and a mausoleum which the Counts of Provence transformed into a palace and late eighteenth century Aixois into the equally massive courthouse that has taken its place. Here burgeoned the "most refined court in Europe" under the "benign, enlightened guidance", so men say, of the good King René.