Paris

It is difficult to dissociate St.Raphael and Frejus completely imbricated one into another. You don’t notice when you leave St.Raphael to enter Frejus. Especially during the summer when it’s overcrowded. If this region is rather overshadowed by its world famous neighbours such as Saint-Tropez to the east and Cannes to the west, it is by any means worth our attention.
Saint-Raphael, built in terraces (26,000 citizens) is a modern family bath resort with a large well-maintained sand beach (La Veillat), especially fit for children. It’s rare that winter temperatures go below 11 Celsius.
Forum Julii was founded in 43 B.C. as a market place by Julius Caesar. A halt for the Roman troops on their way from Spain to Italy. When emperor Augustus decided to house the 8th legion in Forum Julii, this city became on of the most important
Frejus was during the Roman period one of the most marine bases of the western Mediterranean. The biggest ships could come into centre town thanks to a 500 m canal, which had a 2 km long stone quay. In 31 B.C. the inhabitants had the opportunity to go and see the galleys captured during the battle of Actium from Cleopatra by Caesar.
Years went by and the laguna started to cover with sand from the 2nd century. Activities declined and stopped completely. When you loiter inside Frejus today, no hair in your head would believe that once the sea was just next to you. The distance to Frejus Plage must be 3 km now.
Thus Frejus joined Aigues-Mortes at the Pantheon of great dead harbours and disappeared out of the news just coaxing his Roman vestiges.
Napoleon made the news two times in Frejus. The first was when he disembarked after his campaign in Egypt in 1799 and the second time when he embarked in 1814 to join his exile to the island Elba.
In the large delta of the Massif des Maures and the Corniche de l’Esterel, the land was fertile but the danger of floods were real since the Royan and Argentan could become sometimes very wild in the winter. To avoid a permanent water shortage in Frejus, a dam was in the Reyran in 1954, 10 km upstream the hamlet of Malpasset. The dam was 60 m high and could contain 50 million cubic m, but it exploded like a bomb after an intense rainy period on 2nd December 1959 13 minutes after nine. Twenty-one minutes later the all-destroying water reached Frejus. Thousands of hectares of fertile were destroyed, hundreds of houses collapsed, 450 people drowned or died.
I mixed maybe a little bit Frejus with Saint-Raphael but you cannot dissociate them really. St.Raphael is a resort and Frejus is the place with all the roman remains we will visit in our next essay.

Bibliography:

John Pemble, "the Mediterranean Passion, Victorians and Edwardians in the South", (Oxford University Press 1988), Mary Blume, "Cote d'Azur. Inventing the French Riviera" (Thames and Hudson, London 1982), Stephen Liégeard, “La Cote d’Azur” (Ed.Serre, Nice 1988 a reprint), “La Provence des origines à l’an mil, by P.A. Fevrier (ed.Ouest-France 1989), Dictionnaire de le France médiévale”, by Jean Favier (Fayard , Paris 1993)

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