Arles has always been a city of traditions.  Gardians and Arlesian women participate in all the traditional seasonal festivals in and around Arles, the land of Frédéric Mistral.  With six other poets he created in 1856 the Félibrige, a literary movement designed to protect and promote the Provençal language.  The quality of Mistral’s poetry and the new interest it inspired in the Provençal language resulted in him receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904.  With this money Mistral created the Museon Arlaten.  This ethnographical museum exhibits items having to do with the Provençal identity and daily life.  It is here that you can study the Arlesian costume, and Provençal music, still very much alive in the 21st century: galoubets (fifes) and tambourins (drums) still accompany a lively farandole at the end of many a celebration, where the Provençal national anthem, the Coupo Santo, is still sung.