Part 18

This building is a specimen of the imperfect and fragmentary manner in which the Northern Gothic style was employed in Provence. We have here also an example (and we shall meet with more frequent instances as we proceed eastwards) of the spread of the Italian-Gothic style beyond its ordinarily understood boundary. But as all the country between Genoa and Toulon was for long either under the sway of Genoa or of the Grimaldi of Monaco, it is only natural to find traces of Italian taste in the Riviera, which indeed is in all respects far more Italian than French.

Fig. 139 shews an ancient lamp of brass work suspended in the centre of the cathedral.

The houses in the town of Fréjus possess many quaint bits of architectural detail, amongst which the woodwork of the old doorways may be specially mentioned (Fig. 140). Similar telling and original specimens of wood and iron work, it may be remarked, are not uncommon throughout the Riviera.

St Raphaël, a small town a few miles to the eastward, now forms the port of Fréjus. The mountainous district of “Les Maures,” which lies along the coast between Toulon and Fréjus, may either be visited from Hyères on the west (by diligence), or from St Raphaël on the east (by steamer). The latter mode forms a long but very pleasant day’s excursion. A small trading steamer leaves St Raphaël on certain days (mentioned in the “Indicateur”) at 8.30 a.m., and reaches St Tropez about 10.15, after a pleasant voyage round the headlands between the Gulf of Fréjus and that of Grimaud. St Tropez occupies the site of the ancient Heraclea Caccabaria, an important naval station in Roman times. The town has several times been destroyed by the Saracens and Corsairs, who in the ninth century took possession of the whole of the detached chain of mountains still called after them by the name of “Les Maures.” The sheltered gulf of Grimaud formed a fine harbour for their ships, and the port St Tropez was then a place from which a considerable trade was carried on with the African coast. In the later centuries it suffered the usual disturbances under Charles of Anjou, and in the wars of Religion.

The town still possesses some trade, and there is a fair number of coasting vessels in the harbour, to which, with their large brown sails, they give a peculiar and pleasing effect (Fig. 141). Some of the houses shew signs of having seen better days, but the whole place has a somewhat decayed and crumbling appearance. The town is surmounted by a castle, which was constructed in 1793, on the top of the hill to the south. It is surrounded with high walls loopholed for musketry and strengthened with bastions. The traffic in fish seems to be considerable, and is carried on in a dark vaulted market place, where the fish are exposed for sale, and where they are kept cooler than in the open air. The entrance to this fishy cave is somewhat picturesque (Fig. 142).

A daily omnibus runs from St Tropez to Cogolin at the upper end of the Gulf of Grimaud, forming a very pretty drive of an hour and a quarter. At Cogolin the road to Hyères branches off to the left, and that to Le Luc to the right. A daily diligence runs each way between Cogolin and Le Luc. There is time, after the arrival of the omnibus from St Tropez, to walk on to Grimaud and wait for the diligence there. In crossing the plain the towering ruins of the castle, crowning a lofty pyramidal hill, are seen rising about two miles off, and give promise of a splendid subject. From the base of the hill (Fig. 143) the white houses of the town clustering round the grey walls of the castle have a commanding appearance, and even when seen close they form some fine and picturesque combinations. But from an architectural point of view the castle is disappointing, being reduced to a mere skeleton of two towers, connected by a ruined wall of enceinte (Fig. 144). It was built in the fifteenth century by Italian architects for the Grimaldi, to whom this country then belonged, and it was occupied till the middle of last century.

Many of the houses of the town are new, but there are also some very old and picturesque streets, bordered with rude arcades. The church, though modernised, has retained its old tunnel vault, with transverse ribs, and simple Provençal mouldings. It has also a semi-circular apse, and a round arched door, with very deep voussoirs, like that of Hyères--possibly a survival of the art of the Moors.

The diligence passes here at 2 P.M., and reaches Le Luc about 4.30, after a very fine drive through a mountainous country, covered with noble old forest trees. These consist chiefly of chestnuts and cork oaks, which have grown to a great size, the latter furnishing the materials for the chief industry of the country. The road consists of a long hill up to the Col or pass, on which stands LA GARDE FREINET, and then a long descent down to the plain of the Argens. La Garde Freinet is a small town occupying the site of the famous Fraxinet, or chief citadel of the Moors, which gave its name to all their other settlements in Provence. The Moors took possession of this lofty district in the ninth century, and from it, as a secure centre, they made their predatory descents on the surrounding fertile plains. But in 973, after a severe struggle, they were driven out by a combination of the Christian inhabitants of Provence.

The ancient Fraxinet stood on the summit of a perpendicular rock to the north of the village; but there are almost no vestiges left of the fortress, save a square cistern for water. The town, as seen from the descent on the north side, with its background of precipitous rocks and the deep wooded valley in front, presents one of the most striking and remarkable pictures in this singular locality. The drive down to Le Luc is delightful; the pine woods and rocky glens recalling the peculiar scenery characteristic of our Scottish Highlands.

After passing St Raphaël, the railway has to cut its way through the rocky promontories which here terminate the Esterel range, and jut boldly out into the Mediterranean. In alternate tunnels and viaducts it sweeps round the Cap Roux, passing, on its way, the lovely bay of Agay, and the wonderfully coloured rock masses of the red porphyritic mountains, which contrast so admirably with the rich green pine woods filling the ravines which furrow the hillsides. These mountains were quarried by the Romans, and furnished them with supplies of red and blue porphyry for the adornment of their buildings. They are

still worked, and yield a considerable quantity of hard materials used for street paving. On rounding the point of the Cap Roux, the wide and beautiful bay of Cannes opens to view, with its long range of white villas, backed by the dark pine-covered hills, beyond which the snowy peaks of the Basses Alpes are visible in the distance. The prominent mass of the Mont du Chevalier marks the centre, while the picture is bounded on the left by the valley of the Siagne, and on the right by the Iles de Lérins, with the Castle of St Honorat rising boldly from the sea on the furthest point. In the hollow of the bay, near the mouth of the Siagne, and commanding a fine view of Cannes, stands the ancient Castle of Napoule (Fig. 145), where some fragments of old work still survive; but a new château occupies the principal portion of the old site. Two of the original square towers are in fair preservation, and, together with the chapel and crenellated walls, form an interesting group (Fig. 146). The style seems to have been partly that of the castellated buildings of Italy, with V-shaped merlons between the embrasures, while the voussoirs of the arches are of the deep form observed at Grimaud and Hyères.

Napoule is supposed to have been a Roman port, having a depôt for grain connected with it. The castle was built by the Counts of Villeneuve in the fourteenth century. It belonged to that branch of the family called Villeneuve Franc, and afterwards to the family of Montgrand.

Close to Napoule rises the conical hill of St Peyré, on the top of which are the scanty ruins of a castle and a chapel with an apse. At the base of the hill, and close to the public road, may be seen the remains of another apsidal chapel. Beyond this various branches of the Siagne are crossed, when a small conical hill crowned with

wood rises abruptly on the left, to which the distant towers of Grasse and Mougin, with the mountains beyond, form a background. This hill is the Mont St Cassien, where a famous hermitage existed, and where a great popular festival is still held annually on the 23rd of July. An entrenched post was formed here under the Romans, for the defence of the Aurelian Way. On this spot was also erected a Temple of Venus surrounded with a sacred grove called the Ara Luci (hence the modern Arluc, a small town in the vicinity). In the seventh century this heathen temple was demolished by the religious of the Lérins, and a convent erected instead, which, in its turn, was destroyed by the Saracens. A chapel with an open arcaded porch now marks the spot (Fig. 147), which, surrounded as it is with ancient cypresses and pines, is one of the best designed structures of the kind in the district. Small open-air chapels or shrines of this description, with arcaded porches, are very common all over the Riviera, and often form very pleasing objects in the landscape, occupying, as they frequently do, somewhat prominent sites. They are almost invariably in a late Renaissance style of architecture.

CANNES is the one of the health resorts which has perhaps made the greatest progress within the last fifty years, having developed from the small fishing village which Lord Brougham found it in 1831, when he erected the first English villa, into a town of fine residences and splendid hotels extending for about four miles along the coast, and rising on the wooded hills, or nestling in the sheltered ravines which seam their flanks.

Like most of the towns on the Riviera, Cannes owed its first existence to a rocky eminence in the middle of a bay, forming at once a naturally sheltered harbour and a suitable site for a fortification for its defence (Fig. 148). It is therefore probably a place of very ancient origin, and was in all likelihood the primitive Ligurian settlement of Ægitna, where the Roman Consul Quintus Opimius obtained a victory over the Ligurian tribes B.C. 155. The town was then handed over to the Massiliotes, the allies of the Romans, and went by the name of Castrum

Massiliorum during the Middle Ages. Sometime before the tenth century it became a fief of the powerful Abbey of the Lérins, to which the whole of the adjacent country had gradually become subject. The ecclesiastical suzerain was represented on the mainland by a “chevalier,” who occupied the castle of Cannes, which crowned the rock above referred to, and was surrounded with walls. On the slopes of the castle hill and round the harbour at its base were erected the houses of the ancient town, and in the same position still stand the dwellings of the native population, approached by steep and narrow alleys (Fig. 149).

The summit of the hill is crowned with the only buildings in Cannes having any claim to antiquity. These consist of the “Tour du Chevalier,” the ancient Church of St Anne (formerly the chapel of the castle), and the more modern parish church of the seventeenth century, the whole being surrounded with the remains of walls, towers, and bastions of various periods, enclosing open spaces and courtyards, and presenting a very varied and picturesque _ensemble_.

The “Tour du Chevalier” (Fig. 150) is a structure of peculiar interest, being the first we have met with of a series of similar towers which, we shall find as we proceed, were erected in the eleventh and twelfth centuries for the defence of the towns and churches of this district. These towers are generally, like that at Cannes, square on plan (Fig. 151), and have walls built with courses of square dressed stones, having the faces left rough. The ground floor is vaulted, and is entered only from the first floor by an aperture in the vault. The entrance doorway to the tower is on the first floor, at a considerable height above the ground; being so placed for security and being only approachable by a moveable ladder. The projecting step

to receive the top of the ladder is visible in the Tour du Chevalier, beneath the entrance door. The latter has a straight lintel recessed within a plain round arched opening. From the first floor level a stone stair corbelled out from the interior of the wall and running round the sides of the apartments led to the upper floors, which were originally formed of timber, although now vaulted with flat arches of more recent construction, probably of the sixteenth century. The roof was no doubt flat and was provided with a crenellated parapet, projected on corbels with machicolations between them. This parapet was only destroyed some years ago, when the tower was struck by lightning. The openings for light are small square apertures in the masonry without splay or ornament. They have no internal bay, but are mere oblong holes passing through the walls. These holes might almost be supposed to have been used for projecting beams through, on which to rest wooden hoardings for defence, but there are no doors for access to such works. According to the Abbé Allier, in his History of the “Iles de Lérins,” this tower was begun in 1073 by the Abbé Aldebert II., partly on Roman substructures. The parapet was, however, not completed till 1395 by the Abbé Jean de Thornafort. This tower and the other similar towers of this district (of which more hereafter) occupied in their design an intermediate position between the keeps of the North, such as that of Montmajour, and the lofty towers of the Italian cities, of which those of Sienna and Verona are well known examples. The courtyard of the castle was enclosed with walls fortified with towers, of which some portions still remain, but the enceinte has been greatly altered in later times, and converted into bastions with platforms for guns, and parapets loopholed for musketry. This was probably done during the Spanish wars of the sixteenth century. Within the walls there were no doubt buildings for the residence of the Chevalier and the garrison, the tower being only used for watching, and as a keep or last resort in case of siege. Of the original structures the only one besides the tower now remaining is the church of St Anne, which, according to the Abbé Allier, was erected towards the end of the twelfth century. This church forms an example of the simple style of Cistertian architecture, which, as already remarked, was largely adopted in Provence--especially, as we shall see, in many of the smaller churches. In these we find the Cistertian plainness combined with the plan of a simple nave without aisles, terminated with an apse at the east end.

The Church of St Anne (Fig. 152), although erected in connection with the castle, also served originally as the Town Church. It is of the same simple type as Thoronet, but on a much smaller scale. The plan (Fig. 153) consists of one long nave, 87 feet in length by 20 feet wide, with a round apse at the east end; and it has no aisles

or transept. The walls are perfectly plain, both internally and externally, and the roof is constructed with a pointed vault, strengthened with square transverse ribs, which spring from simple pilasters in the wall. The cornice between the wall head and the arch consists of the same plain ovalo moulding as at Thoronet, and the part of it forming the impost of the transverse ribs is “cut off” at the sides, like the impost of the cloister arches at that abbey. Some of these imposts, adjoining the central door, have a few rude and scarcely intelligible carvings on them--apparently

of human heads. The apse is semi-circular, with a very short choir raised one step, and covered with a semi-dome as at Thoronet, but there is no round window above the choir arch. The original doorway (Fig. 154) enters from the north side, where, probably, the outer bailey of the castle was situated. It is composed of a simple outer and inner round arch, forming one nook. The impost is a plain cavetto, the portion supporting the inner arch being “cut off” at the sides. The doorway is 5 feet wide; but, in later times, this was found too large, and it has been partly built up and reduced. It was probably placed near the centre of the church, and made of the above width for the convenience of the town’s people. There is a door in the west bay of the chapel, placed on a high level, which may have been used for access from the castle to a gallery or upper floor, such as was frequently introduced in similar castle chapels.

At a comparatively recent date the walls of the chapel have been raised (Fig. 155), and the top of its vault used to form a platform for guns, to aid in the defence of the town and castle.

The existing parish Church of Notre Dame d’Espérance occupies a prominent position on the Mont du Chevalier. It is a heavy building of the eighteenth century. The only redeeming feature it possesses is the west doorway (Fig. 156), which is a good example of the Renaissance work of the seventeenth century. The tower at the north-east angle of the church (seen in the above view) has been raised in comparatively recent times on the substructure of one of the original towers of the castle. The lower portion with its round archway is certainly ancient. The upper part, which is now the clock tower of the town, forms a prominent and telling feature in all the views of Cannes.

In the bay, opposite Cannes, lie the two Iles de Lérins, dedicated respectively to Ste Marguérite and St Honorat.

Architecturally speaking, the Island of St Honorat possesses the most interesting series of buildings in the Riviera, combining, as it does, some features of the architecture of every period and style of Provençal art, whether Ecclesiastical or Civil.

This island, which is the outer and smaller of the two, held, for some centuries, an important and honourable position in the West of Europe. It was originally occupied as a post by the Romans, the materials of whose buildings, in the form of broken bricks, etc., are scattered over the soil. We shall also find that some Roman columns have been preserved and utilised in the castle, while numerous Latin inscriptions may be seen built into the walls of the modern cloisters. In the fifth century the island seems to have been deserted when St Honorat retired to it, and there founded a monastery, which was destined to become famous. It constituted for long the chief repository of all the learning and education which remained in Southern Gaul; and, like Iona, became a centre from which missionaries issued to enlighten the surrounding countries, and spread religion amongst the Barbarians. Besides many other celebrities, St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is said to have been educated here.

A monastery was erected in the centre of the little island, which is only about half-a-mile in length. Some remains of a church of the eleventh century were still extant in 1836, when Mérimée visited the island. It was a simple basilica, having a nave of six bays, covered with a pointed barrel vault, and side aisles with abutting vaults, like Thoronet.

But, in 1876, these remains were swept away, and a new church erected in the Provençal style, but without any special features. The only ancient portion now remaining is the cloister (Fig. 157), built in the simple Cistertian style, with a circular vault, strengthened with transverse ribs. The side next the cloister garth is enclosed with a wall, in which only small openings or windows are perforated--not the usual wide arcade.

Of the antique structures of the island an extremely interesting example still survives in the chapel of the Ste Trinité (Fig. 158), situated at the eastern point of the island, opposite the islet of Ferreol. It is very peculiar in design, and is undoubtedly one of the earliest buildings in Provence.

The plan (Fig. 159) shews a nave of two bays, having one transverse arch supported on simple columns, with rude caps of the same section as the string courses or imposts of the arches, beyond which is a triapsal choir, crowned with a small and rudely-formed dome. The apses have their semi-domed vaults fairly well constructed, but the central dome is not raised from any definite pendentives,

but as best it could be done by the workmen of the time out of a lower dome which fills in the angles between the apses.

The original exterior (Figs. 160 and 161) is extremely plain, the quoins and doorway with its square lintel being constructed with large stones, probably derived from a Roman building (Fig. 162). The upper part of the walls was raised by the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, to form a platform for guns. The earlier form of the western gable is visible in Fig. 160.

We have evidently, in this primitive structure, a rude attempt to imitate the triapsal and domical forms originally used in the early Christian architecture of the cemeteries at Rome, and afterwards more fully developed in the East. Viollet-le-Duc attributes its erection to the seventh or eighth century.

Of the seven chapels which once extended round the island, and formed the object of many pilgrimages, those of Ste Trinité (just described), and St Sauveur near the centre of the north side, alone survive. The latter (Fig. 163) is octagonal on plan, with niches on each of the sides, and a larger central one, forming an apse opposite the door. This apse alone is visible on the outside. The chapel is unfortunately greatly modernised.

In course of time the monastery naturally became rich, and formed a tempting bait to the Corsairs of the Mediterranean, whether Saracen or Christian, who attacked and plundered it several times. It is said that on the occasion of one of these descents in 725 St Porchaire and five hundred monks were massacred. A restored chapel to the south of the convent still bears the name of that martyr.