# Saint-Tropez, Port and Light — The South of France
> A fishing village the painters found first and the world found later — a quay of yachts, a square of plane trees, and a museum of the light that started it all. Saint-Tropez, on the Côte d’Azur.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/french-riviera/saint-tropez/*

---

By **The Editors** — _Saint-Tropez, Var_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

Before the yachts and the cinema, Saint-Tropez was a small fishing port on the quiet side of the Var, and a painter found it first. **Paul Signac** sailed in, stayed, and brought the others; the light off this particular bay turned half of modern French painting bright. The glamour came later — the village underneath it is still there.

## I. The port and the old town

On the **quay** the yachts now line up where the fishing boats moored, and the painters once set their easels facing the same row of ochre and pink houses. Behind, the old quarter of **La Ponche** keeps its narrow lanes and little shingle beach, and the **Citadelle** on the hill looks down over the whole gulf.

“The painters came for the light, the world came for the painters, and the light is still free.”

From the notebook

![A shaded square with plane trees and a game of boules](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1554149082-75d460afced3?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The Place des Lices — plane trees, the market, and boules in the shade.

## II. The Place des Lices and the Annonciade

Inland, the **Place des Lices** is the village’s living room — a square of plane trees with a market on Tuesdays and Saturdays and a game of **boules** most evenings. By the port the **Musée de l’Annonciade**, in a deconsecrated chapel, holds the pointillists and Fauves who worked here — Signac, Bonnard, Matisse — and explains why they came.

![A long pale sandy beach under a clear sky](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1576341041968-319baa97c70a?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

Pampelonne, below Ramatuelle — the long sand the village is famous for.

## III. The beaches and the gulf

The famous sand is not in the village but along the bay at **Pampelonne**, below the hill village of **Ramatuelle** — a long pale beach that made Saint-Tropez a byword in the 1950s. Out of season, walk the coast path round the peninsula for the vineyards, the umbrella pines and the gulf without the crowds.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _visit_

Getting there

No train; by road from Saint-Raphaël or by boat across the gulf — the boat is the better arrival.

When to go

May, June and September; July and August are for the yachts and the crowds.

Where to stay

**La Ponche**, the old fishermen’s hotel in the heart of the old town.

Read next

[The Riviera in three days, Nice to Menton](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/french-riviera/riviera-in-three-days/)

E

About the Author · L’auteur

#### Élise Marchand

Travel Editor — based in Marseille

Élise has been driving the back roads of the Midi for the journal since its first issue. She pays for her own rooms and her own lunches — and only writes about the places she would return to.

[More by Élise Marchand — voir ses articles](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/journal/)

Continue reading · À lire ensuite

### More from the _South_

[

![A village on the French Riviera](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1503696967350-ad1874122058?fm=jpg&q=74&w=900&auto=format&fit=crop)

Côte d’Azur

#### The Riviera in three days, Nice to Menton

](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/french-riviera/)[

![A table on the Riviera](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1567720512899-3a71832bd46c?fm=jpg&q=74&w=900&auto=format&fit=crop)

The Table

#### Six tables worth the detour this spring

](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/the-table/)[

![A hotel on the Riviera](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1582497475588-49b76871cf42?fm=jpg&q=74&w=900&auto=format&fit=crop)

Stays

#### Where to stay on the Côte d’Azur

](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/stays/)