Collioure is the last real harbour before Spain, a Catalan port where the Pyrenees come down to the sea — pink and ochre houses round a bay, a domed bell tower standing in the water, and a light so pure that two painters here invented a way of seeing. It is small, and it has earned its fame several times over.
I. The bell tower and the castle
The church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges stands right on the shore, its round bell tower a former lighthouse that the boats still steer by. Beside it the Château Royal, once a castle of the kings of Mallorca, fills the headland between the two little beaches. Walk the quays at dusk, when the colour comes up and the bell tower glows against the sea.
“A port so bright that two painters threw out the rules and called it Fauvism.”
II. Where Fauvism began
In the summer of 1905 Henri Matisse and André Derain painted side by side here and threw out everything they had been taught about colour — the violent, joyful canvases they sent back to Paris that autumn were christened Fauvism, the wild beasts. Reproductions on easels around the town mark the exact spots; the light that startled them is unchanged.
III. The vines and the anchovies
The hills behind rise in dry stone terraces of vines, worked by hand, that make the reds of Collioure and the sweet Banyuls next door. And the town has salted anchovies for centuries — two family houses still cure them by hand, and a fillet on bread with local oil is the simplest good thing to eat on the whole coast.
