Our Blog - Fort Saint-Elme, France

Before the construction of the Saint Elme fortress, there was only one watch tour built in the 9th century. This tour was called "Torre de la Guardia" and allowed the locals to protect themselves from the Norman or Barbarian invasions from the sea. In 1344, King Peter IV or Aragon took over the area and undertook construction of fortifications at the foot of the tower, and then again in the late 1400's under Louis XI.

In 1538, Emperor Charles VI decided to build a defensive structure around the original "Torre de la Guardia" (which was still standing) to defend Collioure and Port-Vendres. This structure was a six-branched fortress capable of withstanding all the artillery of the time, with walls more than 8 meters thick. The fort was completed in 1552.

In 1680, under Louis XIV, Vauban improved the defensive system of the region. At Fort Saint-Elme, ditches were dug and defenses laid out based on plans starting from 1691. The fortress was badly damaged in 1793, during an especially violent confrontation between the French and the Spanish garrison, who had taken over the Fort.

From 1942 to 1944, the Saint Elme Fortress was occupied by the German navy, which made it an observation post to anticipate an Allied landing. During the retreat, the German troops destroyed part of Port-Vendres and robbed the Fort. There was some reconstruction work and it only opened to the public in 2008.

The fort sits almost right in the middle between Collioure and Port-Vendres, and from the top of the hill you can get amazing views of Collioure.

Here is the fort as we are arriving, with the original "Torre de la Guardia" in the middle. Then you can easily make out the pointed "Vauban" fortification walls. If you look closely above the greenish/blueish truck in the 3rd picture, you can see how the walls sit on top of the jagged rocks.

There was a little seat on the side wall, so we tried to get a decent picture of Lucy and Tom there.

Then we headed into the tower, which had these drawbridge-style doors. In the various rooms of the tower, they had displays of various old military gear, these first few pictures dating from the 16th century.

This is actually a nice drawing of the plan, which shows the two different levels of fortifications (the yellow and then the red) around the original tower (the pink circle in the middle of the inner star fortifications). You can also see the date on this, December 1744, so it was not the original Vauban plans.

These pictures are (I think) out looking towards Port-Vendres and the very South part of Collioure.

And finally, a view of the "Torre de la Guardia".

This is a view of the Fort (upper-right) along with the Collioure windmill (middle-left) from the beach at Collioure.

Now just a little about Terraces and wine. This region has 2 different AOCs, both made from the same grapes: Banyuls and Collioure. Banyuls is a sweet wine, mainly an apéritif or dessert wine. The production process is similar to the process to make Port and the resulting wines are similar to port although slightly lower in alcohol. The Collioure AOC uses the same grape varieties and depending on who you talk to, the Collioure AOC is a hand-me-down ... that is ... the grapes that are not used for Banyuls AOC wines are used to make Collioure wines. The Collioure AOC is also fairly new. While the Banyuls AOC has existed since 1936, the Collioure AOC was only created in 1971. We had several people mention Banyuls wines to us, saying they were very good but also a bit on the more expensive side. Much of this is due to the fact that, in general, everything is done by hand or with horses due to the interesting terrain. Basically, the vineyards are on the sides of hills in terraces and so tractors can't be used. Horses are used to plow as needed and all of the grapes must be hand picked.