Fréjus - St Raphaël:  A Magical History Tour

It may seem obvious, but these two towns, always lumped together on road signs and frequently in tourist documentation, are actually two quite different places. What is less obvious until you go there is that the two places are St-Raphaël-Fréjus-Plage on the one hand and Fréjus proper on the other, and that they are some distance apart. Although both have long histories, this is much more evident in Fréjus town than in the parts on the coast, though traces are there too if you look for them.

Whether you choose to do the foot-slogging around the Roman remains before lunch (bearing in mind that it can be very hot in the height of the season) and recover among the shops and beaches afterwards, or vice versa, is entirely up to you. Whichever you decide, both areas offer a good selection of restaurants and snack places across a wide range of prices.

If you approach the area by way of the A8 autoroute, you will have a foretaste of what is to come as you leave by exit 38. Alongside the access road past the tollgates you will see, first, a sculptural representation of three sections of the aqueduct that used to bring water to Fréjus 40km from Mons to the north (sections of the real aqueduct can still be seen on the outskirts of the town), Then come two small stone Roman galleys atop white stone waves. After the tollgate is another galley, nearly four metres high and 15 metres long, complete with oars. This is also visible from the RN7, the alternative means of access to the A8.

These sculptures were designed by Olivier de Rohozinsky, a local architect, and installed by ESCOTA, which runs this part of the autoroute network, in 1966, when the toll system was extended to cope with mounting traffic.

The story of Fréjus begins in 49BC, when the town was founded by Julius Caesar, probably initially as a transit camp for Roman armies travelling the Via Aurelian westwards towards Marseille. The name is said to be derived from one of the earliest developments there, the Forum Julii, the modern name being a corruption, via Provençal, into modern French. If that seems to demand too much of a stretch of the imagination, you have only to consider how the squaddies of the British army of the Peninsular Wars corrupted ‘El Infanta de Castile’ into London’s Elephant and Castle, to realise that, when it comes to muddling language, just about anything is possible. (There is an alternative theory about the Elephant and Castle, that the bones of a mastodon were unearthed there, but that seems boringly prosaic.)

Over the years, the town grew rapidly, with the addition of defensive ramparts and imposing buildings, to house a population of around 40,000. It was contemporarily known as ‘the Pompeii of Provence’, a title that was soon to lose its popularity. However, it was with the decision of Julius Caesar’s successor Augustus to develop a port there that really put Fréjus on the map of the Roman Empire. For those who recall Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Augustus was the imperial name of the wimpish Lepidus. Once in power, however, he became rather more significant than Shakespeare allows.

The port that Augustus founded seems, from studies of the remains, to have been quite big by the standards of the time, with some 2km of quays. These were needed when Rome went to war with Cleopatra’s Egypt. It was here that a fleet of 200 galleys were built in readiness for the battle of Actium which saw victory for Rome.

This battle, an early example of the significance of sea power in war, pitted Augustus’ light, swift galleys, mostly biremes and triremes, against the huge unwieldy vessels of the Egyptian fleet. Though powerful, with as many as 10 tiers of oars, these lacked the manoeuvrability of their opponents, and no fewer than 140 of them were captured and brought back to the port of Fréjus after the battle - another indication of its size.

As part of the port development, there was a large citadel and a lighthouse (the hexagonal Lanterne d’Auguste) to mark the entrance to the harbour. The ramparts, with a circumference of some 3km, had gates to the east and west. That to the west, the Porte des Gaules, survives but of the Porte d'Orée to the east there remain only parts of the Roman baths.

The town’s fortunes rose and fell with its port. This depended for its success on a deep and broad channel from the coast. As this gradually silted up, the port ceased to be viable and Fréjus - like Aigues-Mortes in the Camargue or Rye in Sussex - was left, literally, high and dry. Its lowest ebb was the sacking of the town by the Saracens in the 10th century. As it ceased to be a centre of any real importance, its population declined and it is only in the present century that the level has increased to match and then surpass that of the Roman period. Today it has reached about 48,000, making it the fourth largest town in the Var, trebling during the tourist season.

Tourism apart, Fréjus today is probably best known for its superb peaches.

Coming back to the present, the visitor’s first problem is parking. There are two large car parks, one by the Porte des Gaules, the other across the big roundabout from the well-signed tourist office. (NB: Although both are big, they are still not large enough to cope with high season volumes of visitors.) These are at either end of the main through road, made up by the rues Jean-Jaurès and General de Gaulle. Today, these are streets of shops, hardly distinguishable from their equivalents of those in many other towns in the area and giving little hint of past grandeur - although, as in many old French towns, it always pays to look above the ground floors to find interesting signs of earlier times. To the south of rue Jean-Jaurès opens what is now a vast irregularly-shaped place where markets are held on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. 

Within this area are the cathedral, alongside the Hôtel de Ville, and the Archaeological Museum. The cathedral includes a fifth century baptistery, one of the earliest known Christian monuments in France, now topped by a 19th century cupola. The cathedral partly dates from the 10th century but was mostly built in the 13th and 14the centuries. The doors are carved with panels in which traditional religious scenes contrast with depictions of Saracen raids - to one side the Holy Virgin, to the other the rape of those less privileged.

Of particular interest are the 12th/13th century cloisters; while records showed that the ceilings were originally made up of small wooden panels, painted with heraldic devices, mythical creatures and illustrations of mediaeval life, it had long been supposed that these had been destroyed. It was only comparatively recently, during a restoration project, that large numbers of them were found still to be in place, invisible under centuries of accumulated grime. They are undergoing progressive restoration and many are now to be seen back in place.

Other later additions include 15th century choir stalls and a 17th century spire topping a crenellated tower built to protect the 14th century former Bishop’s Palace, now serving as the town hall.

On the western edge of the town, just past the Porte des Gaules, is the Roman amphitheatre, the oldest in France. Though modest in design and relatively decrepit compared with those of Arles or Nîmes, it was built to hold 10,000 spectators and is still in use for bullfights - Fréjus marks the eastern limit of this activity in the south of France - although practical seating has been restored on only one side of the arena. This, by the way, is the arena from which Picasso drew his inspiration for his series of bullfighting pictures. You have to loathe both bullfighting and Picasso not to find these subtle depictions, in just a few lines and colours, impressive. The Roman theatre, slightly to the north, is similarly reduced to a few rows of seats and the foundations of the orchestra and stage of the semi-circular building.

All the principal sights are well signed throughout the town, as is a recent development: the route des metiers d’art. This takes the visitor through some of the maze-like back streets where old buildings are being gradually restored and made available as ateliers for artists and craft workers, some of whom are already installed and showing their wares.

For those prepared to get back into their cars and tour around, there are several sites of possible interest, depending on one’s interests and tastes. To the north-east at La Tour de Mare is the Chapel of Notre Dame de Jerusalem, decorated with frescoes by Jean Cocteau. In the same direction, 1km from the centre, is the Villa Aurélienne in a 22-hectare park devoted to Mediterranean vegetation and housing parts of the old aqueduct. Despite its name, the villa is Palladian retro, built in the 1880s. Bought by the town in 1988, it has been restored ‘according to 19th century ideas of the Italian Renaissance’, and is now used for photographic exhibitions, concerts, lectures, conferences and VIP receptions.

At Malpasset, 10km to the north of the town, are the remains of the barrage that collapsed in December 1959, causing flooding, extensive damage and the loss of 400 lives. Nearer town in the same direction is the extraordinary Buddhist pagoda, the only shrine of its kind in France and dedicated to the memory of 5000 Indo-Chinese soldiers who died serving France in the first world war buried nearby. Equally bizarre is the Sudanese mosque, another WW1 memorial, 3km in the direction of Fayence. Painted bright red it has been described, rather unkindly, as ‘resembling a raspberry cake’.

Assuming that you started your visit in Fréjus, it must surely be lunchtime by now and you can undoubtedly find something to suit your taste and pocket either here or in St-Raphaël. If you choose the latter, the coastline offers what seems miles of wall-to-wall eateries, with the obvious but not exclusive bias towards fish - but it’s worth remembering that those a little inland may well be as good and less expensive: as everywhere, a sea view costs more. If you decided to start at St-Raphaël, however, you’ll have to leave all the foregoing till later.

The most promising places to park at St-Raphaël are in the vast semi-underground parking opposite the Casino on the coast road, or the underground car park beneath the Square Dr Regis, with an entrance opposite the rail station. The square above the latter is huge but, surprisingly, has few restaurants erecting their parasols on it. The former, however, is part of a man-made promontory, topped by gardens from which one can see, to the east, the two large sea-girt red rocks known locally (for no very obvious reason) as the Lion de Terre and the Lion de Mer.

St-Raphaël used to be very much a poor cousin of Fréjus, though the balance is rather different now. It is known to have been a coastal settlement of the Romans, some of whose wealthiest citizens chose to build on the coast magnificent villas for their retirement (‘Dunroman’, perhaps?). All traces of these are lost, alas, since they were sacked by the Saracens in 940AD and the area they once occupied now houses the Casino.

By Fréjus standards, the town’s history is short. Despite the posh villas erected on the front, St-Raphaël does not rate a mention in the archives before 1043, when it was knows as San Rafe. Despite the silting up of the channel to Fréjus, the port seems to have been little used before the Middle Ages. In fact, awareness of St-Raphaël outside the immediate area seems hardly to have existed until 1799, when Napoleon landed there on his return from Egypt. His next visit, in 1814, was less triumphant: he was embarking for exile in Elba. His final trip redressed the balance, temporarily, when in 1815 he landed to set out on what was to become known as the Route Napoléon, the famous Hundred Days that culminated in final defeat at Waterloo.

What finally started to put St-Raphaël on the map was the arrival of the railway from Marseille in 1864. It was then discovered by Alphonse Karr, a former editor of Le Figaro, who was instrumental in bringing down his cultured friends. These included Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas and Gounod, who composed his opera Romeo and Juliet there. Karr had made St-Raphaël instantly fashionable, much as Brigitte Bardot a century later would ‘create’ a new St-Tropez. About that time, Françoise Sagan gave St-Raphaël a boost by choosing it as the setting for her best-selling debut novel Bonjour Tristesse.

The British are widely credited with the invention of the French Riviera and they certainly helped to establish St-Raphaël’s credentials as a seaside resort in the late 19th century - who else would have dubbed it ‘the Bournemouth of the Riviera’? And who else would have constructed one of the first golf courses in France there before the first world war? In those days, only visitors played golf in France - and, indeed, in much of mainland Europe: it took set-aside to generate the wave of courses and attached luxury property developments that has even got the French taking up the sport.

St-Raphaël is blessed with a singularly attractive site. It lies just at the eastern end of the Massif des Maures, the long range of hills running just inside the coast all the way from Toulon. The town lies between that high ground and the Massif d’Esterel to the east.

The valley between the two, which once carried shipping up to Fréjus, now provides convenient access for both road and rail connections - as well as the central station for local trains, there is a motorail station with services to Paris and Italy.

This part of the coast also has excellent sandy beaches, whose gentle shelving makes them particularly suitable for children. Nearer the centre, there is deeper water, making it suitable for the creation of the new port in 1979. This was created at the time of a boom in Mediterranean sailing which saw marina developments much of the way between the Spanish and Italian borders. St-Raphaël’s has been described as ‘one of the best between Toulon and Cannes’ and has berthing for nearly 2000 boats and yachts. This, in turn, has given rise to a host of watersport facilities - jet-skiing, parascending, windsurfing, sea angling and scuba diving among them.

On the coastline, the distinction between Fréjus-Plage and St-Raphaël is barely distinguishable: the wall-to-wall mixture of bars, restaurants and souvenir shops is virtually continuous and very similar to those of seaside resorts throughout Europe. But, behind these tourist traps, the town has a character of its own. The roads that climb steeply from the front lead an area of bright, modern shopping streets and squares, surrounding the oldest part of the town where narrow pedestrianised ways lead to the 12th century church built by the Knights Templars in Roman Provençal style. Like the cathedral in Fréjus, this was fortified to provide a refuge for the citizenry in times of danger, complete with a watchtower to guard against Saracens, pirates, slavers and other potential invaders. Close by is the Marine Archaeological museum, which principally houses objects found by local scuba-diving clubs - amphorae, anchors and so on - but whose gardens include a Roman milestone (leaguestone?), the ninth on the way from Fréjus to Cannes. The museum also has panels tracing the town’s history and the techniques used to preserve underwater discoveries.

While in Fréjus the past seems ever-present, in St-Raphaël it takes a feat of imagination to conjure up its Roman and mediaeval history. It is, perhaps, just this contrast between this agreeable little resort town and its archaeologically-rich cousin that gives a combined visit its particular pleasure and interest.