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Last modified: 2018-06-24 by ivan sache
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Flag of Saint-Tropez, two versions - Images by Ivan Sache, 6 April 2018
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The municipality of Saint-Tropez (4,305 inhabitants in 2015; 1,118 ha; municipal website) is
located on the French Riviera, on a paeninsula forming the southern
part of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.
Saint-Tropez is believed to be the site of the ancient Athenopolis, a
moorage station set up by the Greek colonists from Massalia (now
Marseilles). The colony was renamed Heraclea by the Romans after the conquest of Gaul. The legend says that in year 68, Knight Torpes, the
chief of Emperor Nero's personal guard, was converted to the Christian
religion by his prisoner, St. Paul. After Torpes had proclaimed his new faith
during Diana's festival in Pisa. Nero ordered him to be tortured and beheaded. The body was placed on a boat with a rooster and a dog and
launched on the river Arno. The boat was carried away up to the Gulf of
Saint-Tropez, where a saint woman called Celerina, warned by God during
her sleep, picked up the martyr's body, which had remained untouched either by the rooster or the dog. The village located near the landing place of the
boat was named Saint-Tropez after Torpes; the rooster (coq) flew away
with a branch of flax (lin) and landed near the village later named
Cogolin, whereas the dog walked to the village of Grimaud. Torpes / Tropez became the patron saint of the local seamen, and its veneration spread to Italy (especially in Genoa and Pisa) and Portugal.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Saint-Tropez was abandoned by its
inhabitants because of the Saracens' threat, as it was the case for
all fishers' villages located on the Mediterranean coast. In 972, Count
=william of Provence expelled the last invaders from Saint-Tropez and built the tower today known as the Suffren Tower. In the 15th century,
Provence was ruined by wars, invasions and epidemics. Count René
reorganized his state and created in 1441 the Barony of Grimaud,
granted to his Chamberlain Jean de Cossa (1400-1476). However, the Gulf of
Saint-Tropez remained unprotected, so that René commissioned
the Genoan noble Raphaël de Garezzio to organize its defense. Garezzio
brought 21 Genoese families that rebuilt the city of Saint-Tropez and
revamped its defense system. Parts of the fortification system and the
old village with its gates, narrow streets and small squares have been
preserved until now. Exempted of any kind of taxes, the inhabitants were
granted in 1558 the right to raise a militia commanded by a municipal captain.
The troubles that followed the murder of King of France Henri III in 1589 and
the military intervention of King of Spain Filip II in the Religious
Wars between the French Catholic and Protestants placed Saint-Tropez under
the threat of a Spanish or Savoyard naval attack. Accordingly, a new
city wall was built, incorporating the former city but also the town
(locally known as bourgade) and the Mills' hill. The first part of the
fortification was completed in 1589. Provence was invaded by Savoy in 1592 but Saint-Tropez was not damaged. The Duke of Épernon (1554-1642), Governor of Provence, however, refused to disband his troops in order to perserve his personal power and to reduce the power of the burghers of Saint-Tropez; he
built a big citadel between the city and the mills. In 1595, King Henri
IV sacked the duke and replaced him by Charles of Lorraine; refusing to leave Saint-Tropez, the duke was besieged in his own citadel by the
militia of Saint-Tropez, faithful to the king. The siege began on
24 January 1596. The troops commanded by the Duke of Guise were sent to help
the assaulters and the citadel was seized and completely demolished on
4 April. In spite of the Treaty of Vervins signed in 1598, Provence
remained under Spanish threat. The new governor, the Duke of Guise, established a line of fortresses on the coast between Antibes and Martigues. In spite of the reluctancy of the inhabitants of
Saint-Tropez, the Mills' hill became the Citadel's hill. The citadel,
whose building had started in 1602, was crowned in 1607 by a big
hexagonal tower.
In 1637, the Saint-Tropez militia repelled a squad of 21 Spanish
galleys. The last privileges of the Saint-Tropez burghers were
abolished by Louis XIV in 1672 when he set up a permanent Royal
garrison in the citadel. In 1674, the king funded the Hôtel Royal des Invalides (now the Army Museum) in Paris, soon proved to be too small; in 1690, several veterans' companies were sent to
different fortified places of the kingdom, including Saint-Tropez. The
veterans watched the citadel until the French Revolution and
contributed to the economic development of the town. The citadel was
increased and reorganized by Marshal de Belle-Isle during the War of
Austrian Succession, in the middle of the 18th century. During the
Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the citadel of Saint-Tropez was the
center of the local coastal defense system. The English fleet prefered
not to attack it in 1793. With the development of economy and
communication, the military role of the citadel progressively faded
out. It was eventually decommissioned in 1993, purchased by the
municipality of Saint-Tropez, transformed into a museum and registered as
an historical monument.
A garrison town, Saint-Tropez lived also from traditional
activities such as fishing, ship building, trade and agriculture. The most famous of the local seamen, Pierre-André de Suffren (1729-1788), officer of the French Royal Navy, wasappointed Baillif of the Order of Malta, Vice Admiral of France and Commander of the Fleet by Louis XVI. Suffren fought during the War of Succession of Austria, the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. In 1775, he was appointed Lieutenant of the King for the town of Saint-Tropez and
Governor of the citadel. He later went back to Paris, where the exact
cause of his death, maybe a duel, is not known. The statue honoring
him was made with bronze from cannons taken from the enemy and offerred
by Emperor Napoléon III in 1866.
General Allard (1785-1839), born and deceased in Saint-Tropez, was a loyal soldier of Emperor Napoléon I and the aide de camp of Marshal Brune; he married a Sikh princess who survived him for 40 years in Saint-Tropez. The port of Saint-Tropez
welcomed several famous guests, such as Marie de' Medici, who was
offerred in 1600 a branch of coral by a fisher, and the brother of a
Japanese Shogun who called at in the port during a seastorm in October
1615.
During the French Revolution, the town was renamed Héraclée, after its
ancient Roman name. The wealth of the port and the town increased in
the 19th century due to maritime trade. The three-master La Reine des
Anges, once the flagship of the French merchant navy, was built in
Saint-Tropez in 1860. The beautiful houses built by the shipowners in
the Gambetta Street recall that period.
In 1892, the painter Paul Signac (1863-1935), one of the leaders of the
Pointillist school, sailing on his yacht Olympia, discovered the
small fishers' village of Saint-Tropez. He bought there a house that he
named La Hune (lit., the top [of a ship]) and transformed into his
studio, where he invited his friends, such as Cross, Matisse, Derain
and Marquet. Saint-Tropez became a main center of painting avant-garde
of the early 20th century. The Museum of Annonciade, housed since 1955
in a former chapel located on the port of Saint-Tropez and abandoned
during the French Revolution, shows 56 paintings, dating from
1890-1950, bequeathed by the local collector Georges Grammont. Fairly small, the collection includes only masterpieces by painters
from the Pointillist, Fauvist and Nabi schools. Among the painters
exhibited there are André Derain (Pont sur la Tamise, 1906; Effets de
soleil sur l'eau, 1906; Westminster, 1906), Henri Matisse (Paysage
corse, 1898; La gitane, 1905-1906; La femme â la fenêtre, Nice, 1920; Intérieur à Nice, 1920), Pierre Bonnard (Nu devant la cheminée, 1919), Georges Rouault (Paysage biblique, 1935), Georges Braque (Paysage de l'Estaque, 1906), Georges Seurat (Chenal de Gravelines, étude, 1890), Henri-Edmond Cross (La plage de Saint-Clair, 1906-1907), Paul Signac (Saint-Tropez au soleil couchant, 1896; Les pins parasols aux
Canoubiers, 1897; Saint-Tropez, le quai, 1899), Raoul Dufy (Jetée de
Honfleur, 1930), Félix Vallotton (Misa à son bateau, 1897), Roger de la Fresnaye (Le rameur, 1914), Kees van Dongen (En la plaza, Femmes à la balustrade, 1910; La gitane, 1910-1911), Aristide Maillol (La baigneuse
drapée, 1921; Nymphe, 1930), Edouard Vuillard (Deux femmes sous la
lampe, 1892; Intérieur aux deux chaises, 1901; La soupe d'Annette, 1900-1901), Albert Marquet (Saint-Tropez, le port, 1905; Port de
Marseille, 1918; Sète, la Canal de Beaucaire, 1924; Paris, quai
d'Orléans, 1930) and Maurice de Vlaminck (Le Pont de Chatou, 1906).
Between the two World Wars, Saint-Tropez remained a small fishers' port, mostly known by Americans such as Anais Nin (1903-1977), who stayed there several times. After the Second Word War, the Existentialist group settled every summer in Saint-Tropez, but the fame of the town remained quite limited.
In 1956, Saint-Tropez was rediscovered thanks to the movie Et Dieu
créa la femme (And God Created Woman) by Roger Vadim (1928-2000), starring the
then less-known actress Brigitte Bardot (born in 1934 in Paris), whose
parents owned a house in Saint-Tropez. As it is often said, "And God
created woman... but the Devil invented Brigitte Bardot". This was not
the first movie with Bardot, who had already appeared in Guitry's Si
Versailles m'était compté (1954) and René Clair's Les Grandes
Manœuvres (1955); Et Dieu créa la femme, however, was the first movie in which Bardot was used as a sex symbol. The movie seems now fairly old
fashioned and it is hard to believe that it was condemned by the
Catholic Church's Legion of Decency, as was the same year the much
better Elia Kazan's Baby Doll, and caused a big scandal in the USA.
Brigitte Bardot, quickly nicknamed B.B., purchased the Madrague
estate and became the symbol of Saint-Tropez and of sexual liberation.
In 1965, the sculptor Aslan portrayed her as Marianne, one of the symbols of the French Republic. With years, B.B. made less and less
films and her record is pretty weak. Her best films are
Henri-Georges Clouzot's La Vérité (1960), Jean-Luc Godard's Le
Mépris (1960) and Louis Malle's Viva Maria ! (1965). Retired from acting
in 1973, she then campaigned for animal welfare, establishing in 1986
the Brigitte Bardot Fondation; the next year, she collected 3 million
francs by selling her jewels, clothes and most of her personal stuff.
In parallel, she adopted more and more extreme political views, so that
the former symbol of sexual liberation makes from time to time pathetic
statements full of harshness, racism and religious hate.
Vadim's film launched the craze for Saint-Tropez. Several artists and
international jet-setters purchased houses there and
contribute to the summer extravagant life in "Saint-Trop". In the late
1960s, the German playboy Gunther Sachs 1932-2011) released more than
10,000 rose petals over the Madrague from an helicopter in order to
declare his love to Brigitte Bardot. They split only two months after marriage.
The prince of the Saint-Trop's nights was of course, "the Man in White",
that is Eddie Barclay (Édouard Rouault, 1921-2005). A self-taught jazz pianist, Barclay set up an orchestra that played, among others, with Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. He founded in the 1950s the Barclay record label, with Quincy Jones as its artistic director and his own bathroom as its first storing place. Later, Barclay discovered, encouraged and produced several famous
singers of the 1950-1970s, including Léo Ferré, Jean Ferrat, Dalida,
Charles Aznavour, Mireille Matthieu, Eddy Mitchell, Juliette Gréco,
Jacques Brel, Diane Dufresne and Robert Charlebois. However, he refused
to hire Johnny Halliday and Bob Marley and advised Michel Sardou to
stop singing. In the early 1980s, Barclay sold most of his assets and
retired at Saint-Tropez, where he healed his cancer by organizing his
famous feasts where all guests had to be dressed in white. "Monsieur
Eddie" will also remain famous for his eight marriages. Barclay's death
was considered as the end of the French "show-biz" model; all guests
attending his burial were of course dressed in white. Roger Vadim and
Eddy Barclay are buried in the maritime cemetary of Saint-Tropez,
beside other famous inhabitants of the village such as the painter
Dunoyer de Segonzac (188'-1974) and Blandine Liszt (1835-1862), Franz Liszt's daughter, who had married
a statesman from Marseilles, Émile Olliver.
It would be unfair not to mention the folkloric fame Saint-Tropez owes
to the French actor Louis de Funès (1914-1983) and to the movie director Max Pécas (1925-2003) tribute website)). Ironically, they probably contributed more to the fame of the town than
the Museum of Annonciade.
On 9 September 1964, the movie director Jean Girault (1924-1982)
launched the film Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez, starring Louis de
Funès (1914-1983) as maréchal des logis-chef Cruchot. Quite thin, the movie's synopsis entirely tailored to De Funès' terrible
rages, grimaces and gesticulations. The main task of Cruchot / De Funès
is to hunt nudists who invade the beaches of Saint-Tropez. The film is
in the wake of the popular (if not populist films) made by &EAcute;mile
Cousinet (1896-1964), in which the traditional and conservative (if not
reactionary) values were defended by stereotypic characters such as
priests and soldiers facing the modern evolution of the society. From 1965
to 1982, De Funès and Girault shot another five sequels of the
Gendarme de Saint-Tropez but none of them reached the level of the
series' pilot. Le Facteur de Saint-Tropez (1985) made
by Girault's former assistant Richard Balducci (1922-2015) attempted to resurrect
the Gendarmes' spirit but was a big failure.
Tim Burton said that the movie director Max Pécas (1925-2003) should be
considered as the Ed Wood of comic movies. Pécas was one of the
pioneers of the French pornographic movies with his friend José
Bénazéraf (1922-2012); his movie Je suis une nymphomane (Forbidden Passions), which stirred a great fuss in 1970, is now considered as a very shy,
artistic and glamour porn film!. Later, he specialized in very cheap,
comic Z movies, including the famous Saint-Tropez trilogy: Les Branchés à Saint-Tropez (1983), Deux enfoirés à Saint-Tropez (1986) and On se calme et on boit frais à Saint-Tropez
(1987). The latter movie (lit., "Let's calm down and have a fresh drink
in Saint-Tropez"), which was Pécas' last opus, has been often quoted as
the worst film ever made; Pécas himself admitted that making that
film was "avoidable". Compared to Pécas', Girault's
Gendarmes movies are monuments of actor direction, French
intelligence and wit, although both kinds of films spread the very same
conservative message. The main positive element in Pécas' films is the
casting, which includes the nicest collection of breasts ever seen in a
French movie. Moreover, he discovered actors who became later famous,
such as Ticky Holgado (1944-2004) and Victoria Abril (b. 1959).
Ivan Sache, 9 July 2006
The flag of Saint-Tropez (photo, photo, photo, photo) is vertically divided red-white-red. The official tourist's guide of Saint-Tropez says that the red and white colors are those of the Republic of Genoa, adopted in 1470 when Jean de Cossa, Baron of Grimaud, invited 21 Genoese households led by Raphaël de Garezzio to re-settle the town deserted after several raids. Other sources claim that red and white were the traditional colours of the corsairs of Saint-Tropez.
The flag displayed over the citadel (photo, photo) is charged in the centre with the municipal arms of Saint-Tropez. This appears to be a recent change, since most photos of the citadel (photo, photo, photo) show the flag without the coat of arms.
The arms of Saint-Tropez, "Azure a Saint Tropez or clad as a pilgrim
haloed by a circle or diadem or holding dexter a sword argent pointing
downwards surrounded by the writing 'ST-TROPEZ' ", were registered in
the Armorial Général (I, 204; bl. II, 1257; fee, 50 louis; image).
Louis de Bresc [bjs94] states that the same arms are represented on Chevillard's heraldic map of Provence (18th century) and in Traversier & Vaïsse's Armorial National (1846).
Malte Brun (La France illustrée, 1881) assigned other arms to
Saint-Tropez, "Lozengy argent and gules"; these are the well-known arms
of the Grimaldi, Princes of Monaco, who were never lords of
Saint-Tropez. The erroneous assignment is probably based on a confusion
with the neighboring town of Grimaud, which is often, erroneously too,
said to have been founded by a Grimaldi of Monaco, and never used
lozengy arms, either.
The olive and oak branches, the mural crown and the motto are subsequent
additions to the original arms. The motto, reading "Loyal until the end",
recalls that Saint-Tropez remained loyal to the King of France and
supported the siege of the citadel by the royal troops when it was hold
by his opponents.
Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 6 April 2018
The main traditional festival in Saint-Tropez is the I>bravade, celebrated from 16 to 18 May. The landing of the body of Saint Tropez as well as the acts of the former Saint-Tropez militia are re-enacted by "military" parades. The flags used during the
festival (photo,
photo,
photo) are vertically divided red-white-red, charged with other representations of St. Tropez, either lying in the boat that brought his
body from Pisa and watched by a roster and a dog, or standing, colorfully clad and with a red halo.
During the bravade, the flag of Pisa is commonly used (photo), as a tribute to
St. Tropez' original town.
Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 6 April 2018
![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-83-s1.gif)
![[Burgee]](../images/f/fr-83~st.gif)
Flag and burgee of SNST - Images by José Carlos Alegria, 9 July 2006
Yachting was first recorded in Saint-Tropez in April 1866, when "great
sailing and rowing regattas" were ran during the inauguration of the
statue of Suffren. The Société Nautique et Sportive de Saint-Tropez was
formally established on 18 May 1899, following regattas organized during
the bravade by the Cepoun (Town's Captain), Jean-Baptiste Sanmartin. The
flag and burgee of the club were adopted the same day. Winded up during
the First World War, the club was refounded, as SNST, in 1925, with two sections, sailing and swimming, and affiliated to the French Sailing Federation the same year.
Suppressed in March 1942 by the German authorities, the SNST was
re-established on 10 October 1945, with sailing, motorboating,
spearfishing, sea fishing, and, later, water skiing sections. The
Semaine du Golfe (Gulf's Week) regattas were organized for the first
time in 1946 with the neighboring Club Nautique de Sainte-Maxime. In
1955, the SNST organized three prominent regattas, the racing cruise
Saint-Tropez-San Remo (in partnership with Compagnia della Vela de San Remo), the Christian Dior Challenge Trophy
(Saint-Tropez-Porquerolles-Saint-Tropez), and the gulf's triangular
regatta. The sailing school and dinghy center of Les Canoubiers was
inaugurated in 1967.
In 1999, the SNST reactivated the Nioulargue race, initiated in 1981
and stopped in 1995 following a deadly accident, which was renamed to
Voiles de Saint-Tropez.
The SNST (website), with a membership of 500, mostly owners of (at least) a ship,
organizes every year more than 15 regattas, including Voiles de Saint
Tropez (300 ships), the Giraglia Rolex Cup (250 ships; in partnership
with Yacht Club Italiano and Yacht Club de France), the Armen Festival (70 ships), and Voiles d'Automne (60 ships). In 2011, the SNST organized the European Centennial Celebration Regatta of the Star class (100
monotype ships).
The flag of the SNST (photo, photo) is vertically divided red-white-red with a blue anchor in the center. The SNST burgee (photo) is a triangular version of the flag.
Ivan Sache & Dominique Cureau, 6 April 2018
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