La Citadelle - Musée d'histoire maritime

The Maritime History Museum of the Citadelle in St Tropez welcomes a new room dedicated to the Virtual
Designed in 1995 by Philippe Starck.

"I reduced and reduced again, until I created a magical purity, a sort of silver rocket where dreams appear. I wanted Virtuelle to feel like an old wooden yacht, but when you get close to it, you realise that it is actually carbon fibre marquetry, red, brown, tobacco, looking exactly like wood.

Philippe Starck

The yacht adopts a minimalist and elegant form and leaves the Tencara shipyards in Venice in 1999, the year of her launch.

Today, the whole world comes to Saint-Tropez. The museum tells the story of the time when the Tropezians travelled all over the world. As soon as the town was reborn at the end of the 15th century, Saint-Tropez turned to the sea. Fishing and coastal navigation along the Provençal and Ligurian coastline occupied most of the city's sailors. But from the end of the 16th century, more enterprising sailors sailed and traded in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean before, in the following century, the coastline of the Ottoman Empire became familiar to hundreds of Tropezians.

At the end of the 18th century, Tropéziens were to be found on the coasts of Black Africa. The little town benefited from the development of the Marseilles trade. But it was in the 19th century that sailors sailed all the seas of the world, on warships but above all on commercial vessels. The first half of the 20th century marked the apogee of these navigations with captains commanding large sailing ships on the Cape Horn route, or large liners on the most prestigious transatlantic or Far East lines.


It is the formidable epic of the inhabitants of this small town, which was not a simple and charming fishing port, that the museum proposes to make discover or rediscover. The ground floor houses 11 rooms devoted to local activities such as fishing and coastal shipping, as well as the shipyards, the torpedo factory, the submarine cable factory and the hydrography school. The first floor is devoted to distant journeys. Visitors can first discover the three great figures of the city: General Allard, the Bailiff of Suffren and Hippolyte Bouchard, hero of the independence of several South American states. The next five rooms evoke the history of navigation in all the seas of the world. An ambitious and respectful scenography of the building and the collections gives the visitor the impression that he is not visiting a museum but rather travelling in the company of the sailors of La Tropez. The museum is one of the most visited sites in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region and, without a doubt, one of the most surprising and moving.


Text by Laurent Pavlidis


The Citadel of Saint-Tropez


Dating from the 17th century, bought by the commune in 1993, this listed monument is one of the most visited historical and cultural places in the Var.

This monument is composed of a hexagonal keep, an entrance with adjoining curtain wall and bastions. To the keep, built between 1602 and 1608, on the plans of the military engineer Raymond de Bonnefons, were added a few years later, a large bastioned enclosure and a system of moats and counterscarps. The Citadel is one of the most important defence elements between Antibes and Toulon, and is one of the only monuments of this size on the Provencal coast. At the foot of the ramparts, there is a superb panorama over the bay of Saint-Tropez.

In the heart of the dungeon is the modern and lively museum of maritime history. It allows the visitor to discover the daily life of men and women who shaped the Saint-Tropez of today over the centuries, and to meet famous Tropezian sailors, such as the Bailli de Suffren, General Allard or Hippolyte Bouchard, who distinguished themselves on the seas of the world.


For its successful commitment to a quality approach in line with the essential requirements for the satisfaction of our visitors and for the quality of its services and its welcome, the State has awarded the Citadelle of Saint-Tropez - Museum of Maritime History, the Quality Tourism™ mark.

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