The old port
The coloured frontage Signac and Matisse painted.
dronepicr — CC BY 2.0 · Stephane Lesbats (IFREMER, Pôle Ifremer par le mot et l'image - ZI de la Pointe du Diable - CS 10070 - 29280 Plouzané, France) Stephane Lesbats (IFREMER, Pôle Ifremer par le mot et l'image - ZI de la — CC BY 4.0 · Stephane Lesbats (IFREMER, Pôle Ifremer par le mot et l'image - ZI de la Pointe du Diable - CS 10070 - 29280 Plouzané, France) Stephane Lesbats (IFREMER, Pôle Ifremer par le mot et l'image - ZI de la — CC BY 4.0 · Stephane Lesbats (IFREMER, Pôle Ifremer par le mot et l'image - ZI de la Pointe du Diable - CS 10070 - 29280 Plouzané, France) Stephane Lesbats (IFREMER, Pôle Ifremer par le mot et l'image - ZI de la — CC BY 4.0
**By boat** if you can — that is the best answer. The town has no railway station, and the single coastal road **jams completely** in summer; you can spend two hours on the last ten kilometres. Scheduled ferries from **Saint-Raphaël**, **Sainte-Maxime**, **Cannes** or **Nice** arrive at a known time and set you down in the harbour itself, and the crossing is lovely in its own right. The alternative: train to Saint-Raphaël then a bus (about an hour and a half). By car: go **very early** and budget for expensive, distant parking.
Worth it **out of season**, not worth it in August. In May, June, September or October you find what the painters came for: a coloured harbour, rare light, quiet pink and yellow lanes, restaurants at relatively sane prices and a square where people play boules. In July and August you find suffocating crowds, doubled prices, queues of cars and yachts blocking the horizon — an experience that makes you forget the place is beautiful. **Timing here is not a detail; it is everything**.
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A small fishing village that became the most famous summer address in the world — and the transformation has a specific history. In the early twentieth century the **painters** found it: Paul Signac arrived by boat in 1892, liked the light and settled, and Matisse, Bonnard and Dufy followed, painting this harbour until it became a subject in the history of art. The second transformation came in **1956**, when Brigitte Bardot's film *And God Created Woman* was shot here, and the village turned overnight into a global emblem of summer, freedom and celebrity. It has never recovered. Today the town is **double**: in summer it is choked with crowds, enormous yachts, unbelievable prices and its famous nightclubs; out of season it returns to being a quiet Provençal village of pink and yellow lanes, a small harbour and fishermen. What remains in both states: the **old port** with its coloured frontage, the **La Ponche** quarter with its lanes, the **Place des Lices** with its cafés and its boules players, and the citadel above the town. ⚠ And one piece of advice covers everything: **don't come in August** if you have a choice.
The coloured frontage Signac and Matisse painted.
The old fishermen's lanes behind the harbour.
A wholly quiet Provençal village in May and October.
83990 Saint-Tropez, Var