The Beatles at the point of becoming the Beatles. McCartney’s own photographs from 1963–64, recovered from a personal archive and shown here as a portrait of a band still in motion. The unexpected pleasure is seeing the visual artist behind the songwriter.

Body, textile, silhouette, transformation. Vicerial’s sculptural garments sit somewhere between fashion, contemporary art, and a second skin. A precise counterpoint to McCartney’s documentary eye.

Painting that behaves like a collision: images, surfaces, references, and scale held in productive tension inside Norman Foster’s building, directly opposite the Maison Carrée — the best-preserved Roman temple in the world.

A Mediterranean exhibition about motherhood as a social construction, a lived experience, and a visual language. The MuCEM is at its best when it turns a contemporary question into a cultural geography.

Calder, Serra, Turrell, Hadid, Ando, Gehry: a day through a vineyard where the architecture is part of the collection. Come for one work, stay for the landscape.

Studios, exhibitions, rooftops, radio, dance, and an urban view of Marseille that begins where the tourist map usually stops. Check the day’s programme before going.

Forty-seven exhibitions across the city, from former churches to industrial sites. The annual pilgrimage for photography, but also one of the best ways to understand Arles as a living cultural landscape. The 57th edition puts Africa at the centre, and celebrates the centenary of William Klein.

Roman images, power, gods, bodies, and the visual systems of an empire. Nîmes is already a Roman city; this exhibition gives the stones a wider conversation.

Frank Gehry’s tower is the obvious landmark. The reason to go is the wider campus: exhibitions, architecture, landscape, and the sense that Arles is still inventing its cultural future.