Last modified: 2012-05-17 by ivan sache
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![[Flag of Saint-Tropez]](../images/f/fr-83-st.gif)
Flag of Saint-Tropez - Image by Ivan Sache, 9 July 2006
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The municipality of Saint-Tropez (5,542 inhabitants; 1,118 ha) is
located on the French Riviera, on a paeninsula forming the southern
part of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.
Saint-Tropez is believed to be the site of the ancient Athenopolis, a
moorage station set up by the Greek colonists from Massalia (now
Marseilles). The colony was renamed Heraclea by the Romans after the
conquest of Gaul. The legend says that in year 68, Knight Torpes, the
chief of Emperor Nero's personal guard, was converted to the Christian
religion by his prisoner, St. Paul. Torpes proclaimed his new faith
during Diana's festival in Pisa. Nero ordered him to be tortured and
beheaded. The body was placed on a boat with a rooster and a dog and
launched on the river Arno. The boat was carried away up to the Gulf of
Saint-Tropez, where a saint woman called Celerina, warned by God during
her sleep, picked up the martyr's body. Neither the rooster nor the dog
had touched the body. The village located near the landing place of the
boat was named Saint-Tropez after Torpes; the roaster (coq) flew away
with a branch of flax (lin) and landed near the village later named
Cogolin,
whereas the dog walked to the village of Grimaud. Torpes / Tropez
became the patron saint of the local seamen, and its veneration spread to
Italy (especially in Genoa and Pisa) and Portugal.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Saint-Tropez was abandoned by its
inhabitants because of the Sarracens' threat, as it was the case for
all fishers' villages located on the Mediterranean coast. In 972, Count
Guillaume de Provence expelled the last invaders from Saint-Tropez and built the tower today known as the Suffren Tower. In the XVth century,
Provence was ruined by wars, invasions and epidemics. Count René
reorganized his state and created in 1441 the Barony of Grimaud,
granted to his Chamberlain Jean de Cossa. However, the Gulf of
Saint-Tropez remained the weak part of the coast and René commissioned
the Genoan noble Raphaël de Garezzio to organize its defense. Garezzio
brought 21 Genoese families that rebuilt the city of Saint-Tropez and
revamped its defense system. Parts of the fortification system and the
old village with its gates, narrow streets and small squares have been
preserved until now. The families were exempted of any kinds of taxes.
In 1558, they were granted the right to raise a militia commanded by
a municipal Captain.
The troubles that followed the murder of King of France Henri III and
the military intervention of King of Spain Filip II in the Religious
Wars between the French Catholic and Protestants placed Saint-Tropez under
the threat of a Spanish or Savoyard naval attack. Accordingly, a new
city wall was built, incorporating the former city but also the town
(locally known as Bourgade) and the Mills' hill. The first part of the
fortification was completed in 1589. Provence was invaded by Savoy in
1592 but Saint-Tropez was not damaged. Governor of Provence de
l'Epernon refused to disband his troops in order to perserve his
personal power and to reduce the power of the burghers of Saint-Tropez, and
built a big citadel between the city and the mills. In 1595, King Henri
IV sacked l'Epernon and replaced him by Charles de Lorraine; l'Epernon
refused to leave Saint-Tropez and was besieged in the citadel by the
inhabitants of Saint-Tropez, faithful to the king. The siege began on
24 January 1596. The troops commanded by Duc de Guise were sent to help
the assaulters and the citadel was seized and completely demolished on
4 April. In spite of the Treaty of Vervins signed in 1598, Provence
remained under Spanish threat. The new governor, Duc de Guise, decided
to set up a line of fortresses on the coast of Provence between Antibes and Martigues. In spite of the reluctancy of the inhabitants of
Saint-Tropez, the Mills' hill became the Citadel's hill. The citadel,
whose building had started in 1602, was crowned in 1607 by a big
hexagonal tower.
In 1637, the Saint-Tropez militia repelled a squad of 21 Spanish
galleys. The last privileges of the Saint-Tropez burghers were
abolished by Louis XIV in 1672 when he set up a permanent Royal
garrison in the citadel. In 1674, the king funded the Hôtel Royal des
Invalides (now the Army Museum) in Paris; the Hotel proved rapidly to
be too small; in 1690, several veterans' companies were sent to
different fortified places of the kingdom, including Saint-Tropez. The
veterans watched the citadel until the French Revolution and
contributed to the economic development of the town. The citadel was
increased and reorganized by Marshal de Belle-Isle during the War of
Austrian Succession, in the middle of the XVIIIth century. During the
Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the citadel of Saint-Tropez was the
center of the local coastal defense system. The English fleet prefered
not to attack it in 1793. With the development of economy and
communication, the military role of the citadel progressively faded
out. It was eventually decommissioned in 1993, purchased by the
municipality of Saint-Tropez, transformed into a museum and registered as
an historical monument.
Saint-Topez was a garrison town but lived also from traditional
activities such as fishing, ship building, trade and agriculture. Some
of its seamen became corsairs. The most famous of them is Pierre-André
de Suffren (1729-1788), officer of the Marine Royale, appointed Baillif
of the Order of Malta, Vice-Amiral de France and Commander of the Fleet
by Louis XVI. Suffren fought during the War of Succession of Austria,
the Seven Years' War and the American Independence War. In 1775, he
was appointed Lieutenant du Roy for the town of Saint-Tropez and
Governor of the citadel. He later went back to Paris, where the exact
cause of his death, maybe a duel, is not known. The statue honouring
him was made with bronze from cannons taken from the enemy and offerred
by Emperor Napoléon III in 1866.
General Allard (1785-1839), born and deceased in Saint-Tropez, was a loyal soldier of Emperor Napoléon I and the aide de camp of Marshal Brune; he married a Sikh princess who
survived him for 40 years in Saint-Tropez. The port of Saint-Tropez
welcomed several famous guests, such as Marie de Médicis, who was
offerred in 1600 a branch of coral by a fisher and the brother of a
Japanese Shogun who called at in the port during a seastorm in October
1615.
During the French Revolution, the town was renamed Héraclée, after its
ancient Roman name. The wealth of the port and the city increased in
the XIXth century due to maritime trade. The three-master La Reine des
Anges, once the flagship of the French merchant navy, was built in
Saint-Tropez in 1860. The beautiful houses built by the shipowners in
the Gambetta Street recall that period.
In 1892, the painter Paul Signac (1863-1935), one of the leaders of the
Pointillist school, sailing on his yacht Olympia, discovered the
small fishers' village of Saint-Tropez. He bought there a house that he
named La Hune (lit., the top [of a ship]) and transformed into his
studio, where he invited his friends, such as Cross, Matisse, Derain
and Marquet. Saint-Tropez became a main center of painting avant-garde
of the early XXth century. The Museum of Annonciade, housed since 1955
in a former chapel located on the port of Saint-Tropez and abandoned
during the French Revolution, shows 56 paintings, dating from
1890-1950, bequeathed by the local collector Georges Grammont. The
collection is fairly small but includes only masterpieces by painters
from the Pointillist, Fauvist and Nabi schools. Among the painters
exhibited there are André Derain (Pont sur la Tamise, 1906; Effets de
soleil sur l'eau, 1906; Westminster, 1906), Henri Matisse (Paysage
corse, 1898; La gitane, 1905-1906; La femme â la fenêtre, Nice, 1920; Intérieur à Nice, 1920), Pierre Bonnard (Nu devant la cheminée, 1919), Georges Rouault (Paysage biblique, 1935), Georges Braque (Paysage de l'Estaque, 1906), Georges Seurat (Chenal de Gravelines, étude, 1890), Henri-Edmond Cross (La plage de Saint-Clair, 1906-1907), Paul Signac
(Saint-Tropez au soleil couchant, 1896; Les pins parasols aux
Canoubiers, 1897; Saint-Tropez, le quai, 1899), Raoul Dufy (Jetée de
Honfleur, 1930), Félix Vallotton (Misa à son bateau, 1897), Roger de la
Fresnaye (Le rameur, 1914), Kees van Dongen (En la plaza, Femmes à la
balustrade, 1910; La gitane, 1910-1911), Aristide Maillol (La baigneuse
drapée, 1921; Nymphe, 1930), Edouard Vuillard (Deux femmes sous la
lampe, 1892; Intérieur aux deux chaises, 1901; La soupe d'Annette,
1900-1901), Albert Marquet (Saint-Tropez, le port, 1905; Port de
Marseille, 1918; Sète, la Canal de Beaucaire, 1924; Paris, quai
d'Orléans, 1930) and Maurice de Vlaminck (Le Pont de Chatou, 1906).
Between the two World Wars, Saint-Tropez remained a small fishers' port
and was mostly known by Americans such as Anais Nin, who stayed there
several times. After the Second Word War, the Existentialist group
settled every summer in Saint-Tropez, but the fame of the town remained
quite limited until 1956.
In 1956, Saint-Tropez was rediscovered thanks to the movie Et Dieu
créa la femme (And God Created Woman) by Roger Vadim, starring the
then little known actress Brigitte Bardot (born in 1934 in Paris), whose
parents owned a house in Saint-Tropez. As it is often said, "And God
created woman... but the Devil invented Brigitte Bardot". This was not
the first movie with Bardot, who had already appeared in Guitry's Si
Versailles m'était compté (1954) and René Clair's Les Grandes
Manœuvres (1955), but Et Dieu créa la femme was the first movie in
which Bardot was used as a sex symbol. The movie seems now fairly old
fashioned and it is hard to believe that it was condemned by the
Catholic Church's Legion of Decency, as was the same year the much
better Elia Kazan's Baby Doll, and caused a big scandal in the USA.
Brigitte Bardot, quickly nicknamed B.B., purchased the Madrague
estate and became the symbol of Saint-Tropez and of sexual liberation.
In 1965, the sculptor Aslan portrayed her as Marianne, one of the
symbols of the French Republic. With years, B.B. made less and less
films and her record is pretty weak. His best films are probably
Henri-Georges Clouzot's La Vérité (1960), Jean-Luc Godard's Le
Mépris (1960) and Louis Malle's Viva Maria ! (1965). She did her last
movie in 1973 and then campaigned for animal welfare, founding in 1986
the Brigitte Bardot Fondation; the next year, she collected 3 million
francs by selling her jewels, clothes and most of her personal stuff.
In parallel, she adopted more and more extreme political views, so that
the former symbol of sexual liberation makes from time to time pathetic
statements full of harshness, racism and religious hate.
Vadim's film launched the craze for Saint-Tropez. Several artists and
members of the international jet-set purchased houses there and
contribute to the summer extravagant life in "Saint-Trop'". In the late
1960s, the German playboy Gunther Sachs (b. 1933) released more than
10,000 rose petals over the Madrague from an helicopter in order to
declare his love to Brigitte Bardot. They married but split after only
two months of common life.
The prince of the Saint-Trop' nights was of course, "the man in white",
that is Eddie Barclay (Edouard Rouault, 1921-2005). Barclay started as
a self-taught jazz pianist and set up an orchestra that played, among
others, with Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. He
founded in the 1950s the Barclay record label, with Quincy Jones as its
artistic director and his own bathroom as its first storing place.
Later, Barclay discovered, encouraged and produced several famous
singers of the 1950-1970s, including Léo Ferré, Jean Ferrat, Dalida,
Charles Aznavour, Mireille Matthieu, Eddy Mitchell, Juliette Gréco,
Jacques Brel, Diane Dufresne and Robert Charlebois. However, he refused
to hire Johnny Halliday and Bob Marley and advised Michel Sardou to
stop singing. In the early 1980s, Barclay sold most of his assets and
retired at Saint-Tropez, where he healed his cancer by organizing his
famous feasts where all guests had to be dressed in white. "Monsieur
Eddie" will also remain famous for his eight marriages. Barclay's death
was considered as the end of the French "show-biz" model and all guests
attending his burial were of course dressed in white. Roger Vadim and
Eddy Barclay are buried in the maritime cemetary of Saint-Tropez,
beside other famous inhabitants of the village such as the painter
Dunoyer de Segonzac and Blandine Liszt, Franz List's daughter and wife
of the politician from Marseilles Emile Olliver.
It would be unfair not to mention the folkloric fame Saint-Tropez owes
to the French actor Louis de Funès and to the movie director Max Pécas. Ironically, they probably contributed more to the fame of the town than
the Museum of Annonciade.
On 9 September 1964, the movie director Jean Girault (1924-1982)
launched the film Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, starring Louis de
Funès (1914-1983) as maréchal des logis-chef Cruchot. The synopsis of
the film is quite thin and entirely tailored to De Funès' terrible
rages, grimaces and gesticulations. The main task of Cruchot / De Funès
is to hunt nudists who invade the beaches of Saint-Tropez. The film is
in the wake of the popular (if not populist films) made by Emile
Cousinet, in which the traditional and conservative (if not
reactionary) values were defended by stereotypic characters such as
priests and soldiers facing the modern evolution of the society. From 1965
to 1982, De Funès and Girault made together five sequels of the
Gendarme de Saint-Tropez but none of them reached the level of the
pilot of the series. The film Le Facteur de Saint-Tropez (1985) made
by Girault's former assistant Richard Balducci attempted to resurrect
the Gendarmes' spirit but was a big failure.
Tim Burton said that the movie director Max Pécas (1925-2003) should be
considered as the Ed Wood of comic movies. Pécas was one of the
pioneers of the French pornographic movies with his friend José
Bénazéraf and his movie Je suis une nymphomane (Forbidden Passions)
caused a great fuss in 1970 (it is now considered as a very shy,
artistic and glamour porn film!). Later, he specialized in very cheap,
comic beach films (known as séries Z), including the famous trilogy
of Saint-Tropez: Les Branchés à Saint-Tropez (1983), Deux enfoirés à Saint-Tropez (1986) and On se calme et on boit frais à Saint-Tropez
(1987). The latter movie (lit., "Let's calm down and have a fresh drink
in Saint-Tropez"), which was Pécas' last opus, has been often quoted as
the worst film ever made, and Pécas himself admitted that making that
film should have been avoided. Compared to Pécas', Girault's
Gendarmes movies are monuments of actor direction, French
intelligence and wit, althoug both kinds of films spread the very same
conservative message. The main positive element in Pécas' films is the
casting, which includes the nicest collection of breasts ever seen in a
French movie. Moreover, he discovered actors who became later famous,
such as the late Ticky Holgado and Victoria Abril.
Sources:
Ivan Sache, 9 July 2006
The flag of Saint-Tropez is vertically divided red-white-red. Red and white are the traditional colours of the corsairs of Saint-Tropez. The flag is widely used and is flown in different places in the town, for instance on the port and over the citadel. The main traditional festival in Saint-Tropez is the Bravade, during which the landing of the body of Saint-Tropez as well as the acts of the former Saint-Tropez militia are celebrated by "military" parades. Several variations of the flag of Saint-Tropez are used during the Bravade, especially a vertically divided red-white-red flag with a picture of Saint-Tropez dressed as a Roman centurion in the white stripe.
Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 9 July 2006
![[Flag of SNST]](../images/f/fr-83-s1.gif)
![[Burgee of SNST]](../images/f/fr-83~st.gif)
Flag and burgee of SNST - Images by José Carlos Alegria, 9 July 2006
SNST is the local organizer of the famous Giraglia
Rolex Cup, organized by Yacht Club Italiano every year since 1953. The race starts from Saint-Tropez and reaches Genoa via the Giraglia
islet, located off Cap Corse, the northernmost point of Corsica. A
famous winner of the Giraglia is the yacht Helisara, owned by Herbert
von Karajan.
The flag (for use on land) of the SNST is similar to the municipal flag but with a blue anchor in the middle. The SNST burgee is a triangular version of the flag.
Source: SNST website
Ivan Sache & Dominique Cureau, 9 July 2006