At its known origins over a thousand years ago, Méjanes was named ‘Maïanas’. It then evolved into ‘Medianias’, which means “the middle”. The name comes from the domain being located between two different river streams, the Saint Ferréol and the Hulmet, that both came from the Rhône and have disappeared over time.
Since ancient times, many important figures, such as the powerful archbishops from Arles, Mannassès and Rimbaud in the tenth and eleventh century, owned in Méjanes. We can also include the Count of Barcelona Raimond Béranger and his wife, the Countess of Provence. He married her after turning a widower from his first marriage to Marie del Vivar. She was the legendary Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar’s daughter, better known as the Cid, and his wife, Chimène. The courageous Raymond des Baux, a great Saracens soldier who got the tower of Méjanes to be built, is also counted amongst the many.
However, the Baux family, who was participating in wars, had to take loans. This led them to give the Knights Templar the land in 1240 when they couldn’t afford to pay the money back. After that came the Lobat, the Bompard, and the Porcelet. Madeleine Tronchin or Retronchin, widow of Jean Porcelet, had requested in her will from the 20th of November 1478, that an annual mass had to be carried out for eternity, in the Méjanes’s Saint Pierre church.
The family of Aiguière will possess Méjanes for over three centuries, and it is thanks to them that the domain has its beautiful cross.
The Aiguière family offered Méjanes as a wedding gift to the Piquet family. It was to the grandchild Guillaume, who became the Arles consul. His bravery during the epidemic plague of 1720 led King Louis XV to raise the status of Méjanes to a Marquisate. His son Jean-Baptiste-Marie, consul of Provence’s capital Aix, dedicated his life to better the one of his fellow citizens. He was a demanding and passionate forward-thinking leader. A book lover who was continually looking for the most beautiful and rarest piece of work, a humanist! When he died, all of his 60 000 books were gathered in the city of Aix as he wished for it. It is now a library open to the public and bears the name of Méjanes.
Forty years later, Méjanes changes its emblem and becomes the Count and Countess of Montlaur’s property before becoming a land sowed with beetroot seeds by its new owner, the Saint-Louis sugar refinery. During a winter day in 1933, a man dressed as a corporal and two women were received on the domain by the steward, Mister Roux. That is when Paul Ricard became the landlord of the Domaine de Méjanes.
