Pouting sexpot Brigitte Bardot came to St-Tropez in the 1950s to star in Et Dieu Créa la Femme (And God Created Woman; 1956) and overnight transformed the peaceful fishing village into a sizzling jet-set favourite. Tropeziens have thrived on their sexy image ever since: at the Vieux Port, yachts like spaceships jostle for millionaire moorings, and infinitely more tourists jostle to admire them.
Saint-Tropez is a town on the French Riviera, 62 miles west of Nice in the Var department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of southeastern France.
Saint-Tropez was a military stronghold and fishing village until the beginning of the 20th century. It was the first town on this coast to be liberated during World War II as part of Operation Dragoon. After the war, it became an internationally known seaside resort, renowned principally because of the influx of artists of the French New Wave in cinema and the Yé-yé movement in music. It later became a resort for the European and American jet set and tourists
Yet there is a serene side to this village trampled by 60,000 summertime inhabitants and visitors on any given day. In the low season, the St-Tropez of mesmerising quaint beauty and ‘sardine scales glistening like pearls on the cobblestones’ that charmed Guy de Maupassant (1850–93) comes to life. Meander cobbled lanes in the old fishing quarter of La Ponche, sip pastis at a place des Lices cafe, watch old men play pétanque beneath plane trees, or walk in solitary splendour from beach to beach along the coastal path.
