There are moments in our lives where we see a piece of artwork that’s just so stunning and magical that we can’t help but wish we could get whisked away to that world. An artist who paints particularly wonderful places is Vincent Van Gogh. Due to his fame, many people have probably wished they could jump right into his artworks. Although professional artists don’t usually copy a specific landscape directly, a lot of times they’ll use real places to inspire their artwork, Van Gogh not excluded.

In the late 1880’s, Van Gogh lived in Arles, a city in France. While he lived there, he painted most of his famous artworks, inspired by the different sights he saw. Famously, Café Terrace at Night. During his stay in Paris he was also inspired to paint Starry Night Over the Rhône, the Rhône is a major river in Europe.

The Langlois Bridge At Arles With Women Washing is kind of self explanatory, a bridge in Arles, but it’s such a well-loved piece of artwork that it had to be mentioned as one of the pieces Van Gogh created while in Paris. Unfortunately at the time he lived in Arles, it wasn’t exactly a cheerful moment in Van Gogh’s life. Van Gogh was going through a rough patch mentaly and he had to stay at a hospital for a while, where he painted the Ward of Arles Hospital. It’s a simple painting of the sick ward of the hospital he was staying at. He also painted the scene he saw from a balcony or window, perhaps from his hospital room window, the painting was given the title Garden of the Hospital in Arles. He painted many other landscapes at that hospital, not surprisingly considering that he painted around nine-hundred paintings total in his lifetime.

Interestingly enough, it was not the beautiful sights that caught Van Gogh’s eye that inspired him to paint his most famous piece: Starry Night, but rather his time in an asylum. The asylum was called Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and is located near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in France. Several of the floors have now been converted into a museum in honour of and about Van Gogh.

The Town Hall at Auvers is also a painting he did in Paris. He based this painting off of the view he got of the street when he exited the Auberge Ravoux, where Van Gogh was staying for a while. It is located in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small commune on the northwest outskirts of Paris, France. The Church at Auvers was inspired by Auvers-sur-Oise as well. Auvers-sur-Oise is a very important place in the history of Van Gogh. Not only did it inspire a lot of his work, but it is where Van Gogh was fabled to have taken his life at age thirty-seven as well. Auberge Ravoux was the last home he ever had.

While the places that inspired Vincent Van Gogh’s artwork didn’t always come with happy moments in the young painter’s life, it’d still be really cool to go see the places that inspired him to create his masterpieces.