Port Grimaud – François Spoerry's lakeside town on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez

Built from 1966 on reclaimed marshland, Port Grimaud looks centuries old and is barely sixty. A guide to the canals, the church and the architect who invented a Provençal Venice.

At the head of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, between the beach and the first hills of the Massif des Maures, lies a village that seems to have been there for ever: ochre and rose façades, tiled roofs, a church tower, boats tied up at the front door. Port Grimaud, part of the commune of Grimaud in the Var, is in fact a little under sixty years old. It was drawn on paper, dug out of a marsh and filled with seawater – and it has since been recognised by the French state as twentieth-century heritage.

An architect, a marsh and a date

The town is the work of François Spoerry, an architect from Mulhouse who kept a house at Cavalaire-sur-Mer. In 1962 he learned that marshland was for sale at the far end of the gulf, near the mouth of the river Giscle, and bought it. The wetland, long regarded as unhealthy, was lost to the project and to its later twin, Les Marines de Cogolin – a cost that French accounts of the town no longer pass over.

The first building permit was issued on 13 June 1966, but the town counts its birthday as 14 June. Paul Ploix, the official at the Var prefecture who handled the file and a close friend of Spoerry's, asked for the later date to mark the birth of his son that day. The first square to be built, Place du 14-Juin, commemorates both.

How a Provençal Venice was built

Spoerry and his team spent three years on the plans. The town was built on dry land first; only afterwards was the sea let in through the canals. Steel sheet piling marked out the future islands and peninsulas, which were then raised with the spoil from the canals dug alongside. Work began in June 1966 around Place du 14-Juin and the Grand'Rue by the beach, and the first 75 canal-side houses and 40 flats were handed over in July and August 1967. The Hôtel Giraglia opened in July 1968.

To make the new buildings look as old as any Provençal village, Spoerry reused tiles, roof timbers, joinery and ironwork salvaged from the demolition of a quarter of Romans-sur-Isère. His stated model was Martigues, the original "Venice of Provence" on the Étang de Berre, and his basic unit was the fisherman's house: a narrow building of roughly five by ten metres, with a small garden on the street side and a private quay on the canal. Spoerry called the approach l'architecture douce – gentle architecture. The town grew in phases, as Port Grimaud I, II and III, into the 2000s.

Source: French Wikipedia. There are more than 2,000 berths in all; about 300 people live here year-round, some 18,000 in summer.

The church of Saint-François-d'Assise

The church was meant to be visible from the open sea, and it was this, the French accounts say, that persuaded the maritime authorities to approve the project. Its foundation stone was laid on 2 November 1969 and it was inaugurated in July 1973. The design borrows from the fortified churches of the Camargue, Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer above all; the gargoyles are modelled on those of Saint-Geniès in Martigues. A spiral stair of 96 steps climbs the 16-metre tower to a terrace.

Inside, the nave is 29 metres long. The window facing the sea is divided into 25 small panes, each showing a phase of the sun; the regional tourist board credits the glass to Vasarely, while French Wikipedia names Yvaral. The church is ecumenical, shared by Catholic and Protestant congregations, and belongs to the residents. Spoerry, a Protestant, died in Port Grimaud on 11 January 1999 and is buried in a vault inside it.

Seeing it from the water

Because the canals curl around long peninsulas, it is often quicker to cross Port Grimaud by boat than by road. Visitors can do the same aboard the coches d'eau, solar-powered electric boats that leave from the end of Place du Marché, opposite the church. The ride lasts about 20 minutes, without commentary, and departures run continuously through the day from early April to the end of October.

Source: Côte d'Azur France tourist board. Adults €6, children aged 3–12 €4; no booking needed for individuals.

Squares, markets and the cinema

Life in Port Grimaud I gathers on three squares: Place des Artisans, Place du Marché and Place des Six-Canons. In summer there are markets on Thursdays and Sundays. The town was camera-ready almost before it was finished: François Reichenbach filmed scenes for the television special Spécial Bardot here, broadcast on 1 January 1968, while some buildings were still unrendered. Claude Chabrol shot part of Les Biches here, with Jean-Louis Trintignant as an architect said to be modelled on Spoerry, and the closing scene of Le Gendarme se marie was filmed on Place des Six-Canons.

Two curiosities complete the picture. In July 1970 the town celebrated a twinning with Venice that never existed – one of Spoerry's jokes. And a court in Draguignan has extended architectural copyright to the whole ensemble, on the grounds that before Spoerry there was nothing here, which is why the developers have challenged tour operators publishing aerial views of the town.

Around the gulf

Port Grimaud is about five kilometres from the old hill village of Grimaud, eight from Sainte-Maxime along the coast road and nine from Saint-Tropez, and sea shuttles link Saint-Tropez with the ports around the gulf, Grimaud among them. A sandy beach lies at the end of the Avenue de la Mer. For more of the coast, see our Riviera guides on metromode.co.

The festival of the sea

The residents' council keeps one tradition in particular. Every 15 August the fête de la mer et des pêcheurs begins with a mass in Saint-François-d'Assise; afterwards a procession of boats follows the priest along the canals as he blesses the moored boats, and at the harbour entrance a wreath is laid for sailors lost at sea.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.