Toulon (Provençal Occitan: Tolon in classical norm or
Touloun in Mistralian norm, Italian: Tolone) is a city in
southern France
and a large
military harbour on the Mediterranean
coast, with a major French naval base.
Located in
the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur
région,
Toulon is the préfecture (capital) of the
Var
département, in the former
province of Provence.
The population of the city (
commune) in 2005 was approximately
167,400 making Toulon the fifteenth largest city in France. The
population of the Toulon metropolitan area (
aire urbaine in French) in 1999 was 564,823,
making Toulon the tenth largest metropolitan area, after
Strasbourg, in France.
Toulon is an important centre for naval construction, fishing, wine
making, and the manufacture of aeronautical equipment, armaments,
maps, paper, tobacco, printing, shoes, and electronic
equipment.
The
military port of Toulon
is the major
naval center on France's
Mediterranean coast, home of the French Navy aircraft carrier
Charles De Gaulle
and her battle group. The
French Mediterranean Fleet is
based in Toulon.
History
Prehistory
Archeological excavations, such as those at
the Cosquer
Cave
near Marseille
,show that the coast of Provence was inhabited since at least the Paleolithic era. Greek colonists came from Asia Minor
in about the seventh century BC and established
trading depots along the coast, including one, called Olbia, at
Saint-Pierre de l'Almanarre south of Hyères
, to the east
of Toulon. A
Celtic (possibly) people,
the
Ligurians, settled in the area
beginning in the fourth century BC.Toulon harbour became a shelter
for trading ships, and the name of the town gradually changed from
Telo to Tholon, Tolon, and Toulon.
Roman era
Toulon Cathedral (eleventh to
eighteenth centuries)
In the second century BC the residents of Massalia (present-day
Marseille) called upon the
Romans to
help them pacify the region. The Romans defeated the Ligurians and
began to start their own colonies along the coast. A Roman
settlement was founded at the present location of Toulon, with the
name Telo Martius - Telo, either for the goddess of springs or from
the Latin
tol, the base of the hill - and
Martius, for the god of war. Telo Martius became one
of the two principal Roman
dye manufacturing
centers, producing the purple color used in imperial robes, made
from the local sea snail called
murex, and
from the acorns of the oak trees.
Arrival of Christianity
Toulon was Christianized in the fifth century, and the first
cathedral built.
Honoratus and Gratianus
of Toulon (Gratien), according to the
Gallia Christiana, were the first
bishops of Toulon, but
Louis Duchesne
gives
Augustalis as the first historical
bishop. He assisted at councils in 441 and 442 and signed in 449
and 450 the letters addressed to
Pope Leo
I from the
province of
Arles.
A
Saint Cyprian, disciple and
biographer of
St. Cæsarius of
Arles, is also mentioned as a Bishop of Toulon. His episcopate,
begun in 524, had not come to an end in 541; he converted to
Catholicism two
Visigothic chiefs,
Mandrier and Flavian, who became
anchorites and martyrs on the peninsula of
Mandrier. In 1095 a new cathedral was built in the city by Gilbert,
Count of Provence. As barbarians invaded the region and Roman power
crumbled, the town was frequently attacked by pirates and the
Saracens.
Early Modern era
The Tour Royale (16th century)
The Toulon Opera House (1862)
- 1486: Provence becomes part of France.
- 1494: The first military shipyard of Toulon is
constructed by Charles VIII of
France.
- 1497: A fleet from Genoa
blockades
Toulon for several months.
- 1524: The Tour Royale,
Toulon
is completed to protect the harbor. In the
same year, the new fort is sold by its commander to the attacking
Imperial Army of the Connetable de Bourbon, and the city
surrenders.
- 1543: Francis
I invites the fleet of Ottoman
Admiral Barbarossa to Toulon as part of
the Franco-Ottoman alliance.
The residents are forced to leave, and the Ottoman sailors occupy
the town for the winter (see Siege of Nice#The Turks in
Toulon).
- 1564: Charles
IX visits Toulon as part of his royal tour.
1600-1862
- 1660: Under Louis XIV
and his Minister Jean-Baptiste
Colbert, an expanded arsenal and new fortifications are built
by Sébastien Le
Prestre de Vauban.
- 1707: Toulon successfully resists a siege by
the Imperial Army led by the Duke of
Savoy and Prince Eugene, during
the War of the Spanish
Succession.
- 1720: Toulon is ravaged by the black plague, coming from Marseille. Thirteen
thousand people, or half the population, die.
- 1790: After the French Revolution, Toulon becomes the
administrative center of the département of the Var.
- 1793: The town is handed to the British fleet
by its Royalist inhabitants. At the siege of Toulon, The British are expelled by
a French force whose artillery is led by a young captain, Napoleon Bonaparte. In reprisal, the town
loses its status as department capital and is renamed
Port-la-Montagne.
- 1803-1805: The British fleet of Admiral
Horatio Nelson blockades Toulon.
- 1820: The statue Venus de Milo is discovered at Milo and seen
by a French naval officer, Emile Voutier, who admires it, persuades
the French Ambassador to Turkey to buy it, and brings it Toulon on
his ship, the Estafette. It is then taken to the Louvre
.
- 1830: A French fleet departs
Toulon for the conquest of Algeria
.
- 1862: Toulon Opera
opens
Modern history
In 1867, on orders of
Napoleon III
General
François Achille
Bazaine arrived in Toulon without an official welcome after
abandoning the Mexican military campaign and Emperor
Maximilian I of Mexico.
During
World War II, after the Allied landings in North
Africa (Operation
Torch
) the German Army occupied southern France (Case Anton), leading to the scuttling of the French
Fleet at Toulon (27 November 1942). The city was bombed
by the Allies in November of the following year, with much of the
port destroyed and five hundred residents killed. Toulon was
captured by the
Free French
Forces of General
Jean de
Lattre de Tassigny on 28 August 1944.
In 1974 Toulon became again the préfecture, or administrative
center, of the Var. Five years later the University of Toulon
opened. Toulon is one of four French cities where the extreme-right
Front National won the local
elections (1995).
Main sights
The Old Town
The old town of Toulon, the historic center located between the
port, the Boulevard de Strasbourg and the Cours Lafayette, is a
pedestrian area with narrow streets, small squares and many
fountains.
Toulon Cathedral
is located here. The area is also home of
the celebrated Provencal market which takes place every morning on
the Cours Lafayette, which features local products. The old town
had decayed in the 1980s and 1990s, but recently many of the
fountains and squares have been restored, and many new shops have
opened.
The Fountains of Old Toulon
File:Toulon Fountains 2.jpg|Fontaine du Dauphin, Place Paul Comte.
The fountain, on the wall of the Bishop's residence, appears in the
drawings of Toulon made for Louis XIV in 1668.Image:Toulon Place
Puget Fountain.jpg|Fontaine des Trois Dauphins, Place Puget
(1782)File:Toulon Fountains 1.jpg|Fontaine de l'Intendance, Place
Amiral Sénès, (1821)File:Toulon Fountains 4.jpg|the Fontaine-Lavoir
de Saint-Vincent, Place Saint-Vincent (1832), replaced the original
fountain built in 1615. It had a fountain for drinking water and
two basins, for washing clothes, one for washing and one for
rinsing.The Old Town of Toulon is known for its fountains, found in
many of the small squares, each with a different character. The
original system of fountains was built in the late seventeenth
century; most were rebuilt in the eighteenth or early nineteenth
century, and have recently been restored.
The Upper Town of Baron Haussmann
Place de la liberté.
The upper town, between the Boulevard de Strasbourg and the
railroad station, was built in the mid nineteenth century under
Louis Napoleon. The project was begun
by
Baron Haussmann, who was prefect
of the Var in 1849. Improvements to the neighborhood included the
Toulon Opera, the place de la Liberté,
the Grand Hôtel, the Gardens of Alexander I, the Chalucet Hospital,
the palais de Justice, the train station, and the building now
occupied by Galeries Lafayette, among others. Haussmann went on to
use the same style on a much grander scale in the rebuilding of
central Paris.
The Harbour and Arsenal
View of Toulon, the Arsenal and Mount
Faron from the Harbour.
The Toulon harbour is one of the best natural anchorages on the
Mediterranean, and one of the largests harbours in Europe. A naval
arsenal and shipyard was built in 1599, and small sheltered harbor,
the Veille Darse, was built in 1604-1610 to protect ships from the
wind and sea. The shipyard was greatly enlarged by
Cardinal Richelieu, who wished to make
France into a Mediterranean naval power. Further additions were
made by
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
and
Vauban.
Le Mourillon
Le Mourillon is a small seaside neighborhood to the east of Toulon,
near the entrance of the harbour. It was once a fishing village,
and then became the home of many of the officers of the French
fleet. Mourillon has a small fishing port, next to a
sixteenth-century fort, Fort Saint Louis, which was reconstructed
by Vauban. In the 1970s the city of Toulon built a series of
sheltered sandy beaches in Mourillon, which today are very popular
with the Toulonais and with naval families. The Museum of Asian Art
is located in a house on the waterfront near Fort St. Louis.
Mount Faron
Mount Faron (584 meters) dominates the city of Toulon. The top can
be reached either by a cable car from Toulon, or by a narrow and
terrifying road which ascends from the west side and descends on
the east side. The road is one of the most challenging stages of
the annual
Paris-Nice and
Tour Méditerranéen bicycle
races.
At the top of Mount Faron is a memorial dedicated to the 1944
Allied landings in Provence (
Operation
Dragoon) , and to the liberation of Toulon.
Vauban's fortifications
The porte d'Italie, built by
Vauban.
Napoleon departed from this gate in 1796 on his Italian
campaign.
Beginning in 1678,
Vauban constructed an
elaborate system of fortifications around Toulon. Some parts, such
as the section that once ran along the present-day Boulevard de
Strasbourg, were removed in the mid-nineteenth century, so the city
could be enlarged, but other parts remain. One part that can be
visited is the Port d'Italie, one of the old city gates.
Napoleon Bonaparte departed on his
triumphant Italian campaign from this gate in 1796.
Climate
The Harbour at Sunset
Toulon has a
Mediterranean
climate, characterized by abundant and strong sunshine, dry
summers, and rain which is rare but sometimes torrential; and by
hot summers and mild winters. Because of its proximity to the sea,
the temperature is relatively moderate.
The average temperature in January, the coldest month, is 9.3
degrees C., the warmest of any other city in metropolitan France.
In January the maximum average temperature is 12.7 degrees C. and
the average minimum temperature is 5.8 degrees C.
The average temperature in July, the warmest month, is 23.9 degrees
C., with an average maximum of 29.1 degrees C. and an average
minimal temperature of 18.8 degrees C.
Toulon is the city with the most sunshine annually in France; an
average of 2,899 hours per year.
Average rainfall is 665 millimetres per year. The driest month is
July with 6.6 mm., and the wettest is October, with
93.9 mm. It rains less than 60 days per year (an average of
59.7 days) and the amount of precipitation is very unequal in the
different seasons. In February, the month with the most rain, it
rains 7.1 days, but with only 88.3 millimetres of rain, while in
October there are 5.9 days of rain. July, with 1.3 days of rain, is
usually the driest month, but the driest month can fall anywhere
between May and September. Autumn is characterized by torrential
but brief rains; the winter by more precipitation spread out over
loner periods.
Because of the proximity to the sea, freezing temperatures are
rare; an average of 2.9 days a year, and lasting frosts (when the
maximum temperature remains less or equal to zero) are
non-existent. Snow is also very rare (barely 1.5 days per year on
average) and it is even more rare for the snow to last during the
day (0.3 days a year on average).
One distinctive feature of the Toulon climate is the
wind, with 115 days a year of strong winds; usually
either the cold and dry
Mistral or
the
Tramontane from the north, the wet
Marin; or the
Sirocco
sometimes bearing reddish sand from Africa; or the wet and stormy
Levant from the east. (See
Winds of Provence.) The windiest month is
January, with an average of 12.5 days of strong winds. The least
windy month is September, with 7 days of strong winds. In winter,
the Mistral can make the air feel extremely cold, even though the
temperature is mild.
The climate is dry and the humidity in Toulon is usually low. The
average humidity is 56 percent, with little variation throughout
the year; the driest months are July and August with 50 percent,
and the most humid months are November and December with 60
percent.
Source:
Wikipedia article in French
Museums
Toulon has a number of museums.
The
Museum of the French Navy (Musée national de
la marine) is located on Place Monsenergue, next on the west side
of the old port, a short distance from the Hotel de Ville. The
Museum was founded in 1814, during the reign of the Emperor
Napoleon. It is located today behind what was formerly the
monumental gate to the Arsenal of Toulon, built in 1738. The
building of the museum, along with the clock tower next to it, is
one of the few buildings of the port and arsenal which survived
Allied bombardments during
World War
II. It contains displays tracing the history of Toulon as a
port of the
French Navy. Highlights
include large eighteenth century ship models used to teach
seamanship, models of the aircraft carrier
Charles De
Gaulle.
The
Museum of Old Toulon and its Region (Musée du
vieux Toulon et de sa région). The Museum was founded in 1912, and
contains a collection of maps, paintings, drawings, models and
other artifacts showing the history of the city.
The
Museum of Asian Arts (Musée des arts
asiatiques), in Mourillon. Located in a house with garden which
once belonged to the son and later the grandson of author
Jules Verne, the museum contains a small but
interesting collection of art objects, many donated by naval
officers from the time of the French colonization of Southeast
Asia. It includes objects and paintings from India, China,
Southeast Asia, Tibet and Japan.
The
Museum of Art (Musée d'art) was created in
1888, the museum contains collections of modern and contemporary
art, as well as paintings of provence from the seventeenth century
to the beginning of the twentieth century. It owns works by
landscape artists of Provence from the late nineteenth century
(
Guigou,
Aiguier,
Courdouan,
Ziem), and
the Fauves of Provence (
Camoin,
Chabaud,
Verdilhan). The
contemporary collections contain works from 1960 to today
representing the New Realism Movement (Arman, César,
Christo, Klein, Raysse); Minimalist Art (
Sol Lewitt,
Donald
Judd); Support Surface (Cane, Viallat côtoient Arnal, Buren,
Chacallis) and an important collection of photographs by
Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Dieuzaide,
Edouard
Boubat,
Willy Ronis and
André Kertész).
The
Memorial Museum to the Landings in Provence
(Mémorial du débarquement de Provence) is located on the summit of
Mount Faron, this small museum, opened in 1964 by President
Charles De Gaulle, commemorates
the Allied landing in Provence in August 1944 with photos, weapons
and models.
The
Museum of Natural History of Toulon and the
Var (Musée d'histoire naturelle de Toulon et du Var) was
founded in 1888, has a large collection of displays about
dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and minerals, mostly from the
region.
The
Hôtel des arts was opened in 1998, presents
five exhibits a year of works by well-known contemporary artists.
Featured artists have included
Sean
Scully,
Jannis Kounellis,
Claude Viallat,
Per Kirkeby, and
Vik
Muniz.
Literary
Toulon figures prominently in
Victor
Hugo's
Les
Misérables. It is the location of the infamous prison, the
bagne of Toulon, in which the
protagonist Jean Valjean spends nineteen years in hard labour.
Toulon is also the birthplace of the novel's antagonist,
Javert.
One portion of the wall of the old bagne, or prison, where Jean
Valjean was supposedly held still stands to the right of the
entrance of the Old Harbor.
In
Anthony Powell's novel
What's Become of
Waring the central characters spend a long summer holiday
in Toulon's old town. Powell himself stayed at the Hotel du Port et
des Negociants on two occasions in the early 1930s and writes in
the second volume of his memoirs
The naval port, with its small
inner harbour, row of cafes along the rade, was quite separate from
the business quarter of the town. A paddle steamer plied
several times a day between this roadstead and the agreeably
unsophisticated plage of Les Sablettes.
Joseph Conrad's last novel,
The Rover, is also set around
Toulon.
Points of interest
Gastronomy
Local food highlights include:
- cuisine from the Mediterranean and from Provence
- the cade toulonnaise, a speciality composed of
chickpea flour
- the Chichi Frégi, a type of donut from Provence.
Sport
The best of the city's clubs are the
rugby
union team
RC Toulon (gained
promotion to the
Top 14 in 2008), the
basketball team
Hyères-Toulon Var Basket and
the women's handball team
:fr:Toulon St-Cyr Var
Handball, all playing in the top division of their respective
sports.
The city hosts the final four of the annual
Toulon Tournament - an international under
21
football tournament.
The top football club is the
Sporting Toulon Var, currently playing
at the fourth level of French Football (
Championnat de France
Amateurs). Famous players such as
Delio
Onnis,
Jean Tigana,
Christian Dalger David Ginola or
Sébastien Squillaci have played for
Sporting.
Events
Cultural events
Famous people
Toulon was the birthplace of:
- Jean Joseph Marie Amiot,
Jesuit
- Laurent Emmanuelli, rugby
union prop, returning to play for RC Toulon in 2009–10
- Capucine, actress
- Bastien Salabanzi,
Professional skateboarder
- Félix Mayol,
singer and entertainer, and namesake of RC Toulon's stadium
- Raimu, actor
- Gilbert Bécaud, singer
- Mireille Darc, actress
- Sébastien Squillaci,
French International footballer
- Jean Blondel, political
scientist
- LiLi Roquelin,
singer-songwriter
- Emmanuel Bertin, inventor of
kite surfing
- Lucio Costa, architect and urban
planner
- Robert Busnel, basketball
player
- Anne Golon, author, has written a
series of novels about a heroine Angelique
- Loïc Jean-Albert, expert
parachuter
- Maryse
Joissains-Masini, mayor of Aix-en-Provence
- Jacques Le Goff, historian
- Sabine Paturel, singer and
actress
- Gabriel Péri, journalist and
politician
- Brigitte Roüan, film
director and actress
- Cyril Saulnier, tennis
player
- Didier Tarquin, cartoonist and
scenarist
- Joëlle Wintrebert,
writer
Twin cities
- Herzliya
, Israel
- La
Spezia
, Italy
, since
1958
- Mannheim
, Germany
, since 1958
- Norfolk
, US
, since
1988
- Kronstadt
, Russia
, since
1996
- Khemisset
, Morocco
, since 2005
References and notes
Bibliography
- Michel Vergé-Franceschi, Toulon - Port Royal (1481-1789).
Tallandier: Paris, 2002.
- Aldo Bastié, Histoire de la Provence, Editions
Ouest-France, 2001.
- Cyrille Roumagnac, L'Arsenal de Toulon et la Royale,
Editions Alan Sutton, 2001
- Jean-Pierre Thiollet,
Le Chevallier à découvert, Paris, Laurens, 1998
- Maurice Arreckx, Vivre sa
ville, Paris, La Table ronde, 1982 ; Toulon, ma
passion, 1985
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