Our Blog - Port-Vendres, France

Just south of Collioure is the fishing village of Port-Vendres. It is one of the few deep-water ports in this part of the French Mediterranean coast, and as we mentioned earlier in Collioure, Vauban had preferred the deep-water port of Port-Vendres over the shallow inlet in Collioure. Port-Vendres has existed since the Iron age and was later developed by the Romans (Portus Veneris after the goddess Venus).

The focal point of the town (other than great seafood) is a 98-foot tall marble obelisk, that was started in 1780. It is the only monument dedicated to King Louis XVI which has survived without much damage during the French Revolution.

It is made of grey Pyrenean marble, surmounted by a terrestrial globe and crowned with a fleur-de-lis. Closer to the base, there are four bronze turtles, placed at the corners.

At the bottom is a red marble pedestal (the marble from nearby Villefranche) which contains four bronze bas-reliefs representing the newly independent United States of America (which France had supported during the American War of Independence), the abolition of servitude in France, freedom of maritime trade, and the restoration of the French Navy. Here is part of the side showing the American Independence ... I only did a part of it so that you could see the detail.

The monument aux morts, or war memorial sits just in front of the obelisk and was commissioned in 1919 (completed in 1923). It shows a reclining woman holding olive branches in her right hand. The artist, Aristide Maillol, was shocked by World War I and produced 4 war memorials in the department where he was born (this one, as well as those in Céret, Banyuls-sur-Mer, and Elne.

The town seems quite small with just over 4,000 people living there. We took a walk around the port area, and then headed up the hill on the North side of the port.

La Redoute du Fanal is one of the many works built by Vauban between 1673 and 1700 to defend the port. A lighthouse with a green lantern located on the starboard side marks the entrance to the port. In 1780, the light of the lighthouse had a range of more than five leagues.

Across the harbor (we weren't going to venture over to that side) is the Feu métallique du môle, a metal lighthouse on the end of the pier or breakwater. It was built in 1885 and stands 18 meters tall. The staircase that used to be used for the caretaker was removed once the lighthouse was automated.

Heading down from the hill, we saw this picture of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh painting. He was a Scottish architect who moved to Port-Vendres in 1923 (after being briefly arrested on suspicion of being a Germany spy in 1915 during WWI). By that time, he had abandoned architecture and design and concentrated on watercolor painting. He left France in 1927 and died of cancer in 1928. He was cremated and, per his wishes, his ashes were spread over the Mediterranean at Port-Vendres from one of the rocks he had painted

It took us a bit of time to find this, as it wasn't all that obvious to us ... the Tour de l'horlage. In 1932, the development of maritime links with Algeria made it necessary to extend the existing quays. The only possible solution was to destroy the Fort de la Presqu'ile, an old remnant of the Vauban era, and to build a new ferry terminal instead. The fort was dynamited but a tower with a large clock was deemed too valuable to destroy. The stones were numbered one by one, so that it could be reconstructed identically, and it now sits atop the newer buildings on the quays.

A few interesting pieces of trivia ... Since 1990, Port-Vendres has been twinned with Yorktown, Virginia, and this connection can be explained by historical ties. Port-Vendres was the port of embarkation of French regiments sent by Louis XVI to help the American insurgents against the British during the siege of Yorktown. One of the bas-reliefs of the Port-Vendres obelisk refers to the American Independence acquired in 1781 in Yorktown thanks to the troops that left Port-Vendres.

During the Second World War, the town was part of a heavily fortified coastal zone established by the occupying forces of Nazi Germany. Coastal artillery batteries were built at Cap Béar just south of the town, but the Germans abandoned the area in August 1944 a few days after the Allied landings on the Côte d'Azur during Operation Dragoon.