Arles keeps a Spanish-style feria in a French town, staged around a Roman amphitheatre that has been in continuous use for two thousand years. The four days are built on bodegas — temporary bars run by clubs and associations in courtyards and garages across the old town — with peñas playing brass through the streets, abrivados in which Camargue horsemen run bulls down a barricaded road, and corridas in the arena.
It is the opening of the Provençal season and the town's biggest weekend of the year, drawing heavily from the Gard, the Camargue and across the Spanish border.
The bullfighting is genuinely contested. France permits the corrida only in regions with an unbroken local tradition, and Arles qualifies; the Easter programme is picketed most years. A visitor should know what is and is not on the ticket: the street programme, the bodegas and the abrivados involve no killing, the arena corridas do.
No attendance figure is published. The dates follow Easter exactly, which can place the feria anywhere from late March to late April.
PlanningEaster-linked by definition — the whole feria is the Easter weekend and moves with it.