No, the famous city of Saint-Tropez wasn't born in the 1950s with the arrival of the stars. No, it wasn't the celebrities who made Saint-Tropez, as some entertainment journalists still too-often write. The present incarnation of the city is actually more than 500 years old, and over the centuries it has been shaped by its seafarers. Thanks to its fishermen, captains, and crews, Saint-Tropez was renowned in all the world's ports, and, as a result, some of history's most admired sailors dropped anchor in this Provençal town.
The history of present-day Saint-Tropez began in 1470 when the nobleman Raphaël de Garessio organized the repopulation of Saint-Tropez at the request of Jean Cossa, the feudal overlord for the Gulf of Grimaud. Like many parishes in Provence, Saint-Tropez had been abandoned by its residents after wars, epidemics, and famines–the three scourges of the Middle Ages.
The first Tropezians arrived from Italy or nearby villages, and they built their houses around the partially demolished castle tower, which is now the Château Suffren on the Place de la Mairie. Let us imagine them as they carried stones from Ville Vieille, the name they gave to the old village located on the heights, probably slightly west of the current Sainte-Anne chapel. Let us also imagine the boats that carried tools, tiles, and powdered lime. As for the sand, it came from the nearby beaches, while the wood was taken from the forests of the Massif des Maures.
The traces of this early Saint-Tropez can still be seen from the Place Garessio to the Portalet Tower. It was initially a small village with only three streets: rue du Portalet, rue du Puits, and rue Saint-Esprit, all of which still exist today. A book of nautical charts, called a portolan, that was published in the 1470s provides a brief description of this first village that sat at the water's edge. It also confirms the town's maritime vocation by offering advice to sailors: “The Gulf of Grimaud is a good place to hook iron, the bottom is flat, beware of the two reefs that are at the entrance as you go in, and anchor against the houses that are on the shore.”
Little by little, the port developed and surpassed the nearby Port of Cavalaire, which had been active since ancient times. The town experienced remarkable growth throughout the 16th century and attracted both sailors and merchants.
THE 16th CENTURY
A century passed before the feudal lands located between the sea and the towns of Gassin and Ramatuelle began to be cultivated. Vineyards dominated to the extent that the quantity of wine produced quickly proved to be more than were the needs of the local population. The Tropezians, who were already looking out to sea, would export it to the ports of Provence and, most likely, Italy.
The town's coastal trade rights were an essential part of the local economy. The owners and captains imported all the necessities, starting with wheat because it didn't grow abundantly on the local lands. But they also imported everything that the city did not produce, such as ceramics, fabrics, and weapons; in other words, everything that a city in full expansion required. The sailors also exported everything that the Massif des Maures had to offer, such as wood, cork, or chestnuts.
Alongside this coastal shipping activity, fishing began to develop. One should say the fisheries, as the industry took on many different forms. The small one, of course, that caught the fish the locals ate each day; and then, from the 17th century onwards, the big one that used “madrague” traps to catch tuna. Madrague was also the term used for fishermen's storage houses. It is oddly symbolic that this name, reminiscent of the violent fishing that once saw the sea redden with the blood of the tuna, became world-famous after one of these fishermen's homes, La Madrague, was bought by the legendary animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot.
The maritime economy also included the prestigious red coral harvesting industry, with the coral torn from the rocky depths where the Massif des Maures met the azure waters of the Mediterranean. In his 1st century work Natural History (XXXII, 11), the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote that the coastline of southern Gaul abounded in coral and that the coral found near the islands of Hyères was particularly famous. The harvesting was done by free-diving for the coral closest to the surface or, more frequently, with the help of a “Croix de Saint-André”, a metal cross with nets that was dragged across the seabed to rip up the deeper coral. In the 1540s, Tropezian coral harvesters were recruited by boats from Marseille to capture this red gold off the coasts of North Africa. The coral industry further contributed to the enrichment of the town, which counted nearly 4000 residents by the end of the 16th century.
However, the 16th-century Tropezians did experience difficulties. In the 1510s, the Barbarossa brothers captured Algiers. These intrepid sailors, one of whom became famous as “Red Beard”, were in the service of the Sultan of Constantinople. They initiated decades of Muslim piracy along the Christian coastlines, and Saint-Tropez did not escape these depredations. Many Tropezians ended up in slavery in North Africa. Some, like Vincent Sigismund and Antoine Spitario in 1592, managed to escape; others, like Barthélémy Magne, a slave in Tunis, died in captivity in the 1630s. And others, either willingly or unwillingly, were converted to the Muslim religion and became privateers. This group included the young Tropezian Jacques Fabre, who was captured in 1609 at the age of nine and circumcised by force on the boat that brought him back to Tunis. In 1618, he was captured by the Spaniards while sailing under the name Mourad. Nostradamus recalls this insidious and almost permanent danger that threatened residents and sailors in one of his celebrated quatrains: “Not far from the port, plunder and shipwreck / From La Cieutat to the Stecades islands / To Saint Tropé, great merchandise swims / Barbaric hunting on the shore and villages.” The municipal archives are full of allusions to the threat of pirates. In 1518, the “syndics” of Saint-Tropez, the name given to the town councilors, warned their colleagues in Grimaud that fishermen had spotted the sails of 14 Moorish and Turkish boats in the waters of Cap Taillat and Cap Lardier. In 1559, a guard at Cape Lardier was killed, and three others were abducted, along with a woman and two children. A new attack took place at the same location in 1563: a dozen Provençals were kidnapped, and a ransom was demanded.
This menace was the main reason for the development of the “milice bourgeoise”, the part-time militia that still exists today in the form of the Corps de Bravade. Initially, this civil guard was commanded by the lord or by an honorable man in the absence of the lord. From the 1510s onwards, the lord, who did not often reside in Saint-Tropez, gradually abandoned his military obligations. In 1558, the municipal authorities decided to compensate for this void and took charge of the town's defense by appointing a “town captain” each year. Yet despite the dangers of piracy, the 16th century was still a century of growth for the town and its residents. However, the following century would be a century of crisis.
THE 17th CENTURY
The beautiful period of growth now began to slow. Piracy was at its height and a large part of the Tropezian fleet was captured. The archives tell us that from 1607 to 1625, 22 ships, single-mast boats, and barques were seized or burned by the Barbary pirates. The city became impoverished and lost nearly 1500 residents. The poorly dredged port gradually filled with silt. Since the 1600s, a royal citadel had loomed over the town, but despite complaining about the perils they faced, the local population was still too proud to embrace its presence. Not only was it a bastion of royal power, but it also forced them to move the town's mills and now they sat waiting for the wind to blow and the wheat to arrive from elsewhere.
The situation seemed just as catastrophic in the middle of the century. By the 1660s, the fleet was reduced to a few single-mast vessels and small fishing boats. But, like all crises, this one passed, and a recovery was underway by the end of the century.
THE 18th CENTURY
The 18th century was marked by a new period of development as many Tropezians turned to the Ottoman Empire. The Turks no longer had control of the seas and had seen their maritime trade decline. For them, the only solution was to charter ships from the King of France, their sole ally in the Mediterranean thanks to the peace treaty signed between François I and Suleiman the Magnificent in 1536. Strange as it may seem, since this confrontation unfolded between Christians and Muslims, it was the Provençal ships, and in particular the Tropezian ones, that ensured the maritime safety of the goods and people of the Turkish Empire. It was an endeavor that required the experience of the sailors from this small Provençal town; sailors who had long frequented the shores of the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to the Bosporus and from Alexandria to Marseille.
Like other boats based along the Provençal coast, the Tropezian sailors served the Sultan's subjects by transporting goods and people across the Empire. The local sailors primarily conducted this coastal trade in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean and they often spent half their lives in the east. They would have been deeply familiar with the ports of Constantinople, Beirut, Smyrna, Alexandria, Chania, Tripoli… Some of these sailors would become the heads of great seafaring dynasties. In families such as the Trullets, the Allards, the Martins, the Guerins, and many others, sons followed in their fathers' footsteps to become captains themselves. Who remembers nowadays that General Jean-François Allard's forebearers once practiced this trade in the Levant?
The 18th century was also marked by the “Système des Classes” maritime conscription program. This practice, set up by Jean-Baptiste Colbert during Louis XIV's reign at the end of the previous century, consisted of the state drafting French sailors according to the needs of the royal navy. As a result, the king's ships had crews made up of fishermen, shipyard workers, and commercial seamen, all supervised by officers who were mainly from the noble classes. With approximately two-thirds of its men involved in maritime activities, Saint-Tropez was a fertile ground for conscripting sailors. It isn't surprising that so many of them were called to Toulon to embark on warships. There were more than 200 Tropezians at the Battle of Velez-Malaga on August 24, 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, when France supported Philip V–the grandson of Louis XIV–against the other European claims to the Spanish throne. The Levant Fleet, led by Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse and Grand Admiral of France, also sailed from the port of Toulon to take back Gibraltar from the Admiral George Rooke of the English navy.
It is difficult to overstate the role of Saint-Tropez in the French royal navy. Some battles involved 10% of the town's population and more than 60% of its active sailors. More than 500 local sailors took part in the American War of Independence from 1778 to 1784, while more than a 100 were involved in the tragic Battle of the Nile between the British and French fleets in the Bay of Aboukir near Alexandria on August 1 & 2, 1798. There were also more than 70 local men present off the coast of Crimea during the Crimean War in 1854. Despite the decline in the number of sailors, many locals were still in navy uniforms during the two world wars.
THE 19th CENTURY
But let's go back to the main thread of our story as we approach the 19th century. This century was marked by a certain decline, one that Eugène Sue illustrates vividly, and with a touch of irony, in his novel The Salamander: “Quiet and old Saint-Tropez, home of a brave admiral, of the noble Suffren! All that is left of your former splendor are these two towers, reddened by a blazing sun, cracked and ruined, but adorned with green ivy crowns and garlands of blue-flowered bindweeds… And you too, poor port of Saint-Tropez, we can also pity you! For it is no longer those dashing ships with scarlet banners that anchor in your deserted waters; no, it is sometimes a heavy merchant ship or a meager skiff; and if luck has it, a thin schooner, with a narrow bodice tight as a bee, comes to collapse in the shelter of your breakwater, and the entire town is thrown into a state of emotion.” Eugène Sue sensed that a page of the city's history was being turned.
The glorious voyages in the service of the Turks were definitely a distant memory. Yet even though Eugène Sue was an enlightened connoisseur of maritime history, he seemed to overlook the fact that there were still countless men sailing the world's seas, from the coasts of Africa to the West Indies. When his novel appeared in 1832, Saint-Tropez was looking for a future, and it would be the vitality of the Annonciade shipyards that helped restore the city's glory in the middle of the century.
While the shipyards in La Ciotat and La Seyne specialized in the construction of steel-hulled steamers, Saint-Tropez met the demand for wooden sailing boats. The Tropezians would build bigger and bigger boats. Their brigs and three-masted sailing ships would gain renown across the country's southern ports, and Tropezian builders sold their boats to captains from Agde to Antibes. But it was the ship owners and captains of Marseille who bought the most beautiful constructions. For example, in the 1830s, the great shipowner Augustin Fabre purchased a large three-masted ship more than 40 meters long from the builder Jacques Bory, which he named the “Luminy”, after his Marseille property.
While the second half of the 19th century saw many Tropezians gradually turn away from the sea, there was still a considerable number pursuing the trade of their ancestors. They passed through the Strait of Gibraltar to sail the world's seas aboard large three-masted ships that traveled from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, navigated the African coasts from Gorée to Zanzibar, and frequented the ports of Havana, New York, Valparaiso, or San Francisco.Travelers visiting Saint-Tropez, like Guy de Maupassant, or those who ended up settling in the small port, like Paul Signac, mostly noticed the fishermen returning to the quay every day to dry and repair their nets while their wives sold the fish. They were oblivious to the fuller story behind the lives of these seafarers. This is how the myth of the charming little fishing port was born, even though up until the 1920s, captains from Saint-Tropez commanded some of the finest vessels of the French merchant navy on the main lines from Le Havre to New York or from Marseille to Yokohama. It was even a Tropezian, Léon Ignace Gardanne, who beat the world record by crossing between England and Chile in 56 days in 1903.
At the same time, the small town began to attract those seeking peace and quiet. Émile Ollivier, the last prime minister for Napoleon III, opened the way, succumbing to the charms of Saint-Tropez as early as 1862. He was followed at the end of the century by Octave Borrelli, the one-time governor of Egypt, who had a large castle built which still bears his name. The building crowns the Parcs de Saint-Tropez to this day. The history of the painters in the town is well known, but there were also the writers, and then the filmmakers arrived after the First World War, settling in Saint-Tropez and around the gulf.
This is how Saint-Tropez changed its face once again. Soon the little port became very fashionable, and there was a reason that the celebrated showman Léon Volterra was attracted to the town. In 1926, he acquired the Château Camarat, which became the Château Volterra. It was here that he welcomed the actor Raimu, with whom he staged Marcel Pagnol's Marius at the Théâtre de Paris, and the author Colette, who was already beginning to be offended by the town's touristy nature. Volterra even became mayor of Saint-Tropez from 1935 to 1941. Jean Godard's film Pour un soir..!, which was shot in the town in 1931 with Jean Gabin in the lead role, magnificently illustrates the Saint-Tropez of the Roaring Twenties, a Saint-Tropez that would only last a few more years.Many other films would be shot in the town. Some directors would come to tell a story set in Provence, such as Jean Choux, who shot La Servante in 1929. But, more curiously, there would also be those who told stories from the tropics. In fact, Tahiti Beach was named as a tribute to the filming of Aloha, le chant des îles, which was released in 1937. The following year The Beachcomber was released in theatres with the famous actor Charles Laughton in the leading role. After the Second World War, Saint-Tropez would become more fashionable than ever. The filmmakers returned and in 1954, Les Corsaires du bois de Boulogne, directed by Norbert Carbonnaux and assisted by Georges Lautner, was released. Then came Roger Vadim's legendary film And God Created Women. It was shot in 1955, and the famous Pampelonne beach club owes its name to the film.
The rest of the town's story is more familiar, most certainly because it happened more recently. The birth of mass tourism consolidated the reputation of Saint-Tropez. The entire world, from all spheres of society, would turn to Saint-Tropez, where the newest fashions were established in the 1960s and where masterpieces and lovable B-movies continued to be filmed. To this day, the port remains the most famous marina in the world, and the peninsula remains, despite real environmental degradation due to overcrowding, one of the most preserved and least artificial corners in the South of France. And it is clear that behind this festive, celebrated image lies a rich and more intimate history: that of the Tropezians who, generation after generation, have made the Saint-Tropez of today.
The history of present-day Saint-Tropez began in 1470 when the nobleman Raphaël de Garessio organized the repopulation of Saint-Tropez at the request of Jean Cossa, the feudal overlord for the Gulf of Grimaud. Like many parishes in Provence, Saint-Tropez had been abandoned by its residents after wars, epidemics, and famines–the three scourges of the Middle Ages.
The first Tropezians arrived from Italy or nearby villages, and they built their houses around the partially demolished castle tower, which is now the Château Suffren on the Place de la Mairie. Let us imagine them as they carried stones from Ville Vieille, the name they gave to the old village located on the heights, probably slightly west of the current Sainte-Anne chapel. Let us also imagine the boats that carried tools, tiles, and powdered lime. As for the sand, it came from the nearby beaches, while the wood was taken from the forests of the Massif des Maures.
The traces of this early Saint-Tropez can still be seen from the Place Garessio to the Portalet Tower. It was initially a small village with only three streets: rue du Portalet, rue du Puits, and rue Saint-Esprit, all of which still exist today. A book of nautical charts, called a portolan, that was published in the 1470s provides a brief description of this first village that sat at the water's edge. It also confirms the town's maritime vocation by offering advice to sailors: “The Gulf of Grimaud is a good place to hook iron, the bottom is flat, beware of the two reefs that are at the entrance as you go in, and anchor against the houses that are on the shore.”
Little by little, the port developed and surpassed the nearby Port of Cavalaire, which had been active since ancient times. The town experienced remarkable growth throughout the 16th century and attracted both sailors and merchants.
THE 16th CENTURY
A century passed before the feudal lands located between the sea and the towns of Gassin and Ramatuelle began to be cultivated. Vineyards dominated to the extent that the quantity of wine produced quickly proved to be more than were the needs of the local population. The Tropezians, who were already looking out to sea, would export it to the ports of Provence and, most likely, Italy.
The town's coastal trade rights were an essential part of the local economy. The owners and captains imported all the necessities, starting with wheat because it didn't grow abundantly on the local lands. But they also imported everything that the city did not produce, such as ceramics, fabrics, and weapons; in other words, everything that a city in full expansion required. The sailors also exported everything that the Massif des Maures had to offer, such as wood, cork, or chestnuts.
Alongside this coastal shipping activity, fishing began to develop. One should say the fisheries, as the industry took on many different forms. The small one, of course, that caught the fish the locals ate each day; and then, from the 17th century onwards, the big one that used “madrague” traps to catch tuna. Madrague was also the term used for fishermen's storage houses. It is oddly symbolic that this name, reminiscent of the violent fishing that once saw the sea redden with the blood of the tuna, became world-famous after one of these fishermen's homes, La Madrague, was bought by the legendary animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot.
The maritime economy also included the prestigious red coral harvesting industry, with the coral torn from the rocky depths where the Massif des Maures met the azure waters of the Mediterranean. In his 1st century work Natural History (XXXII, 11), the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote that the coastline of southern Gaul abounded in coral and that the coral found near the islands of Hyères was particularly famous. The harvesting was done by free-diving for the coral closest to the surface or, more frequently, with the help of a “Croix de Saint-André”, a metal cross with nets that was dragged across the seabed to rip up the deeper coral. In the 1540s, Tropezian coral harvesters were recruited by boats from Marseille to capture this red gold off the coasts of North Africa. The coral industry further contributed to the enrichment of the town, which counted nearly 4000 residents by the end of the 16th century.
However, the 16th-century Tropezians did experience difficulties. In the 1510s, the Barbarossa brothers captured Algiers. These intrepid sailors, one of whom became famous as “Red Beard”, were in the service of the Sultan of Constantinople. They initiated decades of Muslim piracy along the Christian coastlines, and Saint-Tropez did not escape these depredations. Many Tropezians ended up in slavery in North Africa. Some, like Vincent Sigismund and Antoine Spitario in 1592, managed to escape; others, like Barthélémy Magne, a slave in Tunis, died in captivity in the 1630s. And others, either willingly or unwillingly, were converted to the Muslim religion and became privateers. This group included the young Tropezian Jacques Fabre, who was captured in 1609 at the age of nine and circumcised by force on the boat that brought him back to Tunis. In 1618, he was captured by the Spaniards while sailing under the name Mourad. Nostradamus recalls this insidious and almost permanent danger that threatened residents and sailors in one of his celebrated quatrains: “Not far from the port, plunder and shipwreck / From La Cieutat to the Stecades islands / To Saint Tropé, great merchandise swims / Barbaric hunting on the shore and villages.” The municipal archives are full of allusions to the threat of pirates. In 1518, the “syndics” of Saint-Tropez, the name given to the town councilors, warned their colleagues in Grimaud that fishermen had spotted the sails of 14 Moorish and Turkish boats in the waters of Cap Taillat and Cap Lardier. In 1559, a guard at Cape Lardier was killed, and three others were abducted, along with a woman and two children. A new attack took place at the same location in 1563: a dozen Provençals were kidnapped, and a ransom was demanded.
This menace was the main reason for the development of the “milice bourgeoise”, the part-time militia that still exists today in the form of the Corps de Bravade. Initially, this civil guard was commanded by the lord or by an honorable man in the absence of the lord. From the 1510s onwards, the lord, who did not often reside in Saint-Tropez, gradually abandoned his military obligations. In 1558, the municipal authorities decided to compensate for this void and took charge of the town's defense by appointing a “town captain” each year. Yet despite the dangers of piracy, the 16th century was still a century of growth for the town and its residents. However, the following century would be a century of crisis.
THE 17th CENTURY
The beautiful period of growth now began to slow. Piracy was at its height and a large part of the Tropezian fleet was captured. The archives tell us that from 1607 to 1625, 22 ships, single-mast boats, and barques were seized or burned by the Barbary pirates. The city became impoverished and lost nearly 1500 residents. The poorly dredged port gradually filled with silt. Since the 1600s, a royal citadel had loomed over the town, but despite complaining about the perils they faced, the local population was still too proud to embrace its presence. Not only was it a bastion of royal power, but it also forced them to move the town's mills and now they sat waiting for the wind to blow and the wheat to arrive from elsewhere.
The situation seemed just as catastrophic in the middle of the century. By the 1660s, the fleet was reduced to a few single-mast vessels and small fishing boats. But, like all crises, this one passed, and a recovery was underway by the end of the century.
THE 18th CENTURY
The 18th century was marked by a new period of development as many Tropezians turned to the Ottoman Empire. The Turks no longer had control of the seas and had seen their maritime trade decline. For them, the only solution was to charter ships from the King of France, their sole ally in the Mediterranean thanks to the peace treaty signed between François I and Suleiman the Magnificent in 1536. Strange as it may seem, since this confrontation unfolded between Christians and Muslims, it was the Provençal ships, and in particular the Tropezian ones, that ensured the maritime safety of the goods and people of the Turkish Empire. It was an endeavor that required the experience of the sailors from this small Provençal town; sailors who had long frequented the shores of the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to the Bosporus and from Alexandria to Marseille.
Like other boats based along the Provençal coast, the Tropezian sailors served the Sultan's subjects by transporting goods and people across the Empire. The local sailors primarily conducted this coastal trade in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean and they often spent half their lives in the east. They would have been deeply familiar with the ports of Constantinople, Beirut, Smyrna, Alexandria, Chania, Tripoli… Some of these sailors would become the heads of great seafaring dynasties. In families such as the Trullets, the Allards, the Martins, the Guerins, and many others, sons followed in their fathers' footsteps to become captains themselves. Who remembers nowadays that General Jean-François Allard's forebearers once practiced this trade in the Levant?
The 18th century was also marked by the “Système des Classes” maritime conscription program. This practice, set up by Jean-Baptiste Colbert during Louis XIV's reign at the end of the previous century, consisted of the state drafting French sailors according to the needs of the royal navy. As a result, the king's ships had crews made up of fishermen, shipyard workers, and commercial seamen, all supervised by officers who were mainly from the noble classes. With approximately two-thirds of its men involved in maritime activities, Saint-Tropez was a fertile ground for conscripting sailors. It isn't surprising that so many of them were called to Toulon to embark on warships. There were more than 200 Tropezians at the Battle of Velez-Malaga on August 24, 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, when France supported Philip V–the grandson of Louis XIV–against the other European claims to the Spanish throne. The Levant Fleet, led by Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse and Grand Admiral of France, also sailed from the port of Toulon to take back Gibraltar from the Admiral George Rooke of the English navy.
It is difficult to overstate the role of Saint-Tropez in the French royal navy. Some battles involved 10% of the town's population and more than 60% of its active sailors. More than 500 local sailors took part in the American War of Independence from 1778 to 1784, while more than a 100 were involved in the tragic Battle of the Nile between the British and French fleets in the Bay of Aboukir near Alexandria on August 1 & 2, 1798. There were also more than 70 local men present off the coast of Crimea during the Crimean War in 1854. Despite the decline in the number of sailors, many locals were still in navy uniforms during the two world wars.
THE 19th CENTURY
But let's go back to the main thread of our story as we approach the 19th century. This century was marked by a certain decline, one that Eugène Sue illustrates vividly, and with a touch of irony, in his novel The Salamander: “Quiet and old Saint-Tropez, home of a brave admiral, of the noble Suffren! All that is left of your former splendor are these two towers, reddened by a blazing sun, cracked and ruined, but adorned with green ivy crowns and garlands of blue-flowered bindweeds… And you too, poor port of Saint-Tropez, we can also pity you! For it is no longer those dashing ships with scarlet banners that anchor in your deserted waters; no, it is sometimes a heavy merchant ship or a meager skiff; and if luck has it, a thin schooner, with a narrow bodice tight as a bee, comes to collapse in the shelter of your breakwater, and the entire town is thrown into a state of emotion.” Eugène Sue sensed that a page of the city's history was being turned.
The glorious voyages in the service of the Turks were definitely a distant memory. Yet even though Eugène Sue was an enlightened connoisseur of maritime history, he seemed to overlook the fact that there were still countless men sailing the world's seas, from the coasts of Africa to the West Indies. When his novel appeared in 1832, Saint-Tropez was looking for a future, and it would be the vitality of the Annonciade shipyards that helped restore the city's glory in the middle of the century.
While the shipyards in La Ciotat and La Seyne specialized in the construction of steel-hulled steamers, Saint-Tropez met the demand for wooden sailing boats. The Tropezians would build bigger and bigger boats. Their brigs and three-masted sailing ships would gain renown across the country's southern ports, and Tropezian builders sold their boats to captains from Agde to Antibes. But it was the ship owners and captains of Marseille who bought the most beautiful constructions. For example, in the 1830s, the great shipowner Augustin Fabre purchased a large three-masted ship more than 40 meters long from the builder Jacques Bory, which he named the “Luminy”, after his Marseille property.
While the second half of the 19th century saw many Tropezians gradually turn away from the sea, there was still a considerable number pursuing the trade of their ancestors. They passed through the Strait of Gibraltar to sail the world's seas aboard large three-masted ships that traveled from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, navigated the African coasts from Gorée to Zanzibar, and frequented the ports of Havana, New York, Valparaiso, or San Francisco.Travelers visiting Saint-Tropez, like Guy de Maupassant, or those who ended up settling in the small port, like Paul Signac, mostly noticed the fishermen returning to the quay every day to dry and repair their nets while their wives sold the fish. They were oblivious to the fuller story behind the lives of these seafarers. This is how the myth of the charming little fishing port was born, even though up until the 1920s, captains from Saint-Tropez commanded some of the finest vessels of the French merchant navy on the main lines from Le Havre to New York or from Marseille to Yokohama. It was even a Tropezian, Léon Ignace Gardanne, who beat the world record by crossing between England and Chile in 56 days in 1903.
At the same time, the small town began to attract those seeking peace and quiet. Émile Ollivier, the last prime minister for Napoleon III, opened the way, succumbing to the charms of Saint-Tropez as early as 1862. He was followed at the end of the century by Octave Borrelli, the one-time governor of Egypt, who had a large castle built which still bears his name. The building crowns the Parcs de Saint-Tropez to this day. The history of the painters in the town is well known, but there were also the writers, and then the filmmakers arrived after the First World War, settling in Saint-Tropez and around the gulf.
This is how Saint-Tropez changed its face once again. Soon the little port became very fashionable, and there was a reason that the celebrated showman Léon Volterra was attracted to the town. In 1926, he acquired the Château Camarat, which became the Château Volterra. It was here that he welcomed the actor Raimu, with whom he staged Marcel Pagnol's Marius at the Théâtre de Paris, and the author Colette, who was already beginning to be offended by the town's touristy nature. Volterra even became mayor of Saint-Tropez from 1935 to 1941. Jean Godard's film Pour un soir..!, which was shot in the town in 1931 with Jean Gabin in the lead role, magnificently illustrates the Saint-Tropez of the Roaring Twenties, a Saint-Tropez that would only last a few more years.Many other films would be shot in the town. Some directors would come to tell a story set in Provence, such as Jean Choux, who shot La Servante in 1929. But, more curiously, there would also be those who told stories from the tropics. In fact, Tahiti Beach was named as a tribute to the filming of Aloha, le chant des îles, which was released in 1937. The following year The Beachcomber was released in theatres with the famous actor Charles Laughton in the leading role. After the Second World War, Saint-Tropez would become more fashionable than ever. The filmmakers returned and in 1954, Les Corsaires du bois de Boulogne, directed by Norbert Carbonnaux and assisted by Georges Lautner, was released. Then came Roger Vadim's legendary film And God Created Women. It was shot in 1955, and the famous Pampelonne beach club owes its name to the film.
The rest of the town's story is more familiar, most certainly because it happened more recently. The birth of mass tourism consolidated the reputation of Saint-Tropez. The entire world, from all spheres of society, would turn to Saint-Tropez, where the newest fashions were established in the 1960s and where masterpieces and lovable B-movies continued to be filmed. To this day, the port remains the most famous marina in the world, and the peninsula remains, despite real environmental degradation due to overcrowding, one of the most preserved and least artificial corners in the South of France. And it is clear that behind this festive, celebrated image lies a rich and more intimate history: that of the Tropezians who, generation after generation, have made the Saint-Tropez of today.